A serial killer who preys on elderly black women is only the main course in this smorgasbord of homicides—some proposed, some already disposed —for Butch Karp and his wife Marlene Ciampi. Back in the D.A.'s office as chief of the Homicide Bureau after his stint as a defense attorney (Falsely Accused, 1996), Butch insists on trying confessed killer Jonathan Rohbling himself because of his past successes against the insanity plea that's bound to be lodged by high-powered Lionel T. Waley—even though Butch knows his continuing administrative responsibilities, not to mention his newborn twins, will mean stretching himself perilously thin. Nor is there any rest for equally workaholic Marlene, whose feminist security agency Bello & Ciampi (which specializes in protecting women menaced by stalkers) is growing faster than she can shout ``Drop the weapon!'' In fact, the men stalking Bello & Ciampi's latest clients—tennis pro Trude Speyr, cellist Edith Wooten, and Marlene's returning client Carrie Lanin (whose stalker, just released from prison for stalking, is back on the trail)—are so persistent and so violent that neither Marlene nor her latest subordinates (a rolling-stone security guard she hires through normal channels, a Vietnamese stone killer she takes on unofficially) have time to shout out much of anything before the weapons come out on both sides. If this feast of felonies sounds a little rich, it is: The Rohbling trial, though continually engaging, isn't a stout enough beanpole to hang the whole book on, and Butch and Marlene's growing suspicion that the same perp he likes for a sneaky drug homicide is her top candidate for the most elusive of her stalkers doesn't close the circle very convincingly either. Fans hooked on Tanenbaum's mastery of detail and his gripping way with every single plotline won't care that this time his three-ring circus lacks a true headliner. (Literary Guild/Mystery Guild main selections)
Pub Date: Nov. 3, 1997
ISBN: 0-525-94310-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1997
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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