Consistently inverts familiar situations and makes them spiritual learning moments; even the fan-satisfying shocker climax...
Elder suspense master Matheson's masterpiece, far stronger than his famed chillers (Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, 2002, etc.).
The author combines classic man-against-nature and man-against-maniac tales, then fastens them to the armature of his main character’s spiritual belief system, building fearlessly long God-centered dialogues between hero and madman as if Dostoevsky were wandering around in Stephen King’s The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. Naming other literary echoes, let’s add that the classic rock-face climb from Deliverance gets reprised, as well as Daniel’s ordeal in the biblical lion’s den and Richard Connell’s oft-filmed short story, “The Most Dangerous Game.” Bob Hansen, 44-year-old novelist and sometime screenwriter, wants to write a book about backpacking in the northern California wilderness. Bob and wife Marian have dined thrice with Doug Crowley, 42, an out-of-work action-film actor (he last did a Ford SUV commercial), and his wife Nicole. But then Nicole divorces Doug for catting around, or perhaps because together neither can deal with their druggie son’s gun-in-mouth suicide. Survivalist nut Doug offers to take Bob on a heavy three-day hike to his cabin, where Marian will wait for them. Intimidated by his host, a perfectionist about gear and modes of wilderness survival, Bob sees himself as a flop hiker by campfire on Day One. Doug’s remarks cut ever deeper as we discern that this “malignant narcissist” is pathologically jealous of Bob’s success as writer, husband, and father. Later, Doug reveals his abused childhood and a failed liquor-store robbery that sent him for two years to a reformatory, where he was raped. He does the same to Bob and tells the writer to take off with a three-hour lead; Doug wants to hunt and kill him, then rape (or marry and sodomize) Marian. Solo Bob then faces the endless, outlandish hardships God drops on him as he races to save his wife.
Consistently inverts familiar situations and makes them spiritual learning moments; even the fan-satisfying shocker climax is enriched with irony. First-rate suspense.Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-765-30271-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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