Overstuffed with disturbing imagery and not for the faint-hearted, but seductive and occasionally amusing in its gloomy way.
Biologically enhanced combatants beat the stuffing out of each other in a race to recover secret weapons buried in the final days of the good old U.S.A. in the second volume of Ferrigno’s Assassin Trilogy (Prayers for the Assassin, 2006).
Think things are bad now? Wait until you see the year 2043 when America has split into the Islamic Republic, the Bible Belt and Mormon Territories. The long threatened rise of sea levels has isolated the bulk of Florida; Mexico is nibbling at the border; and the geosynchronous satellites that made communications a breeze have been blown to smithereens in outer-space pile-ups. It is a gloomy world indeed. Black-robed fundamentalists roam the streets of the American Islamic Republic like Talibani on steroids, inflicting justice on the spot, and in the Bible Belt militias and gangs of thugs seem to hold the balance of power outside Atlanta, capital of the Christian states. Neither nation is capable of turning out the scientists or engineers needed to keep up their infrastructure, but they do know how to turn out splendid soldiers along the lines of superskilled Islamic assassin Rakkim Epps, who appeared in the trilogy’s first volume. Rakkim, now middle-aged, would like some time to enjoy domestic life with his brilliant wife Sarah and little son Michael, but his president needs him to infiltrate the Bible Belt, where government forces secretly search for a bit of dark technological magic buried in a Southern mountaintop. Rakkim normally works alone, but on this assignment he is saddled with Leo, a brilliant but spectacularly naïve Jewish computer nerd with no soldierly skills. The unlikely team infiltrate the Belt via the Texas coast. Deadly encounters pile up, Leo falls in love, a surgically enhanced sadist threatens at every step and, back in Seattle, Rakkim’s family is in great danger from the black robes, and everyone is manipulated by an evil and immortal mastermind somewhere at sea.
Overstuffed with disturbing imagery and not for the faint-hearted, but seductive and occasionally amusing in its gloomy way.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4165-3765-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2007
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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