Even with Ludlum’s urge to italicize and slam down double exclams kept under iron control, the new team still has a pop hit...
Veteran bestseller Ludlum (The Apocalypse Watch, 1995, etc.) takes on a co-author for his new trade paperback series.
Lynds (Mosaic, 1998, etc.) has had a calming effect on the Ludlum lust for overexclamatory prose and high body counts—although potentially millions will die here if the mysterious new virus weirdly popping up in unrelated pockets of the States isn’t identified and a cure found to reverse its fast, horrible effects. Colonel Jon Smith, an Army doctor and virologist with the US Army Medical Institute for Infectious Diseases, is in his early 40s and truly in love for the first time. His fiancée, cellular and molecular biologist Dr. Sophia Russell, often works down in Level Four of the Hot Zone at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Sophia leads a team looking into an amazing new virus that has simultaneously struck down an Army major in California, a homeless man in Boston, and a teenaged girl in Atlanta, all suffering the same symptoms and speedy death from lungs filled with blood. Twelve years ago, Sophia accompanied Dr. Victor Tremont into the wilds of Peru, where the natives successfully fought this same virus by drinking the blood of monkeys that had survived infection. When she calls Tremont to verify this, he lies and says he remembers no such thing. Then thugs enter Sophia’s lab while she’s working late, rifle her files, and jab her with the virus. With a great cloud over his heart, Jon seeks his dead fiancée’s killers—although he’s warned off the chase by a former FBI agent and college buddy who knows more about the virus than he should. Suddenly millions of unwitting victims have ingested a slow-acting form of it and will die unless given monkey-blood serum.
Even with Ludlum’s urge to italicize and slam down double exclams kept under iron control, the new team still has a pop hit on their hands that should bounce right up the bestseller lists.Pub Date: June 20, 2000
ISBN: 0-312-26437-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2000
A Gone Girl–esque confection with villainy and melodrama galore.
A wealthy woman with a handsome husband is preyed on by a ruthless con artist.
One day at the gym, Amber Patterson drops the magazine she’s reading between her exercise bike and that of the woman who happens to be beside her, Daphne Parrish. As she bends to pick it up, Daphne notices that it’s the publication of a cystic fibrosis foundation. What a coincidence—Daphne’s sister died of cystic fibrosis, and, why, so did Amber’s! “Slowing her pace, Amber wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. It took a lot of acting skills to cry about a sister who never existed.” Step one complete. “All she needed from Daphne was everything.” Everything, in this case, consists of Daphne’s outlandishly wealthy and blisteringly hot husband, Jackson, and all the real estate that comes with him; Daphne can definitely keep her two whiny brats. Amber hates children. But once she finds out that Daphne’s failure to give Jackson a male heir is the main source of tension in the marriage, she sees exactly how to make this work. Amber’s constant, spiteful inner monologue as she plays up to Daphne is the best thing about this book. For example, as Daphne talks about the many miseries her sister Julie went through before her death, Amber is thinking, “At least Julie had grown up in a nice house with money and parents who cared about her. Okay, she was sick and then she died. So what? A lot of people were sick. A lot of people died.…How about Amber and what she’d gone through?” Meanwhile, poor, stupid Daphne is so caught up in the joy of finally having a friend, she seems to be handing Jackson to her on a platter. Constantine’s debut novel is the work of two sisters in collaboration, and these ladies definitely know the formula.
A Gone Girl–esque confection with villainy and melodrama galore.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-266757-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Chavez delivers a fraught if flawed page-turner that attempts too many twists.
A good Samaritan incurs a psychopath’s wrath in this debut thriller.
Veterinarian Cassie Larkin is heading home after a 12-hour shift when someone darts in front of her car, causing her to dump her energy drink. As she pulls over to mop up the mess, her headlights illuminate a couple having a physical altercation. Cassie calls 911, but before help arrives, the man tosses the woman down an embankment. Ignoring the dispatcher’s instructions, Cassie exits the vehicle and intervenes, preventing the now-unconscious woman’s murder. With sirens wailing in the distance, the man warns Cassie: “Let her die, and I’ll let you live.” He then scrambles back to the road and flees in Cassie’s van. Using mug shots, Cassie identifies the thief and would-be killer as Carver Sweet, who is wanted for poisoning his wife. The Santa Rosa police assure Cassie of her safety, but the next evening, her husband, Sam, vanishes while trick-or-treating with their 6-year-old daughter, Audrey. Hours later, he sends texts apologizing and confessing to an affair, but although it’s true that Sam and Cassie have been fighting, she suspects foul play—particularly given the previous night’s events. Cassie files a report with the cops, but they dismiss her concerns, leaving Cassie to investigate on her own. After a convoluted start, Chavez embarks on a paranoia-fueled thrill ride, escalating the stakes while exploiting readers’ darkest domestic fears. The far-fetched plot lacks cohesion and relies too heavily on coincidence to be fully satisfying, but the reader will be invested in learning the Larkin family’s fate through to the too-pat conclusion.
Chavez delivers a fraught if flawed page-turner that attempts too many twists.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-293617-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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