A consistently entertaining and self-assured crime thriller.
A private investigator attempts to infiltrate a blackmail ring, with the assistance of the FBI.
Karl and Riley Anderson, both accountants, stumble on to a blackmail ring at work and immediately notify the FBI. Their discovery is serious enough that the FBI enters them into a witness protection program and whisks them away to an island off the southern coast of Florida. However, the criminal mastermind behind the scheme, Phillip Agatha, aka the “Fat Man,” tracks them down, and only Riley is able to escape. She has reason to believe Agatha might have an accomplice within the FBI, and so she turns to private investigator Jake Travis for help. Jake discovers that the FBI has already been taking a hard look at Agatha; the feds hope he leads them to even bigger criminal quarry. But Agatha has proved elusive and may be responsible for the deaths of two federal agents, and so the FBI is desperate enough to entertain Jake’s unconventional proposal: he will pose as a client for Studio Four-Twenty, Agatha’s blackmail atelier, with help from the feds. The supervising agent candidly shares with Jake the root of his enthusiasm for the questionable plan: “I’ll be succinct. We would rather lose you than a third man. That is why we are so excited, and supportive, of your suggestion.” Jake goes undercover as the contact for an electronics company about to lose a major contract with the Navy, looking for a governmental insider they can compromise and exploit. Author Lane (The Cardinal’s Sin, 2015, etc.) revisits familiar narrative territory with the reprisal of Jake Travis, but the plot crackles with energy and suspense. The pace is breakneck, and Lane skillfully renders the implausible as grippingly real. The style of the prose is essentially updated crime noir (“ ‘Put my name on the bullet,’ she said in a voice as clear as cold water. ‘The Fat Man. Let ’em know it was me—that Karl Anderson’s girl got him’ ”), and Jake is a Miami version of a well-known literary archetype, the hard-boiled detective. Despite the obviously formulaic elements, the writing is crisp and often clever, and Lane endows Travis with more human depth than most protagonists are blessed with in this genre.
A consistently entertaining and self-assured crime thriller.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Mason Alley Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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