A unique first-person narrative about an information technology expert’s gift and his war against unpunished evil.
Author and main character Robert McCabe intriguingly structures his narrative as an ambiguously true story of semimystical dimensions. A retired IT consultant, he gives a brief overview of his life, his marriages and divorce and then reveals that he has a powerful gift—that of punishing evil using his expertise with computers and research as well as his unique intuition for finding evil that has escaped the long but sometimes incompetent arm of the law. In the early ’80s, Robert meets a Michael, a Vietnam veteran with a penchant for random acts of aggression but who also wants to join the seminary. However, Michael has recently lost his position at the local Southern Baptist church. After 25 years, Robert checks up on his old diocese and reads that Michael is now the head honcho after the mysterious deaths of several key people who would have been obstacles in Michael’s path to the top. McCabe the author deftly changes techniques here, relating some of the narrative from Michael’s point of view, and readers learn a great deal about the world that McCabe creates. Michael has been blessed since childhood with masterful telekinetic powers. These powers made him an excellent soldier in Vietnam and he has used them with increasing purpose and brutality in the intervening years. McCabe suspects as much, though isn’t aware of the extent of Michael’s powers. He calls Michael, seemingly just to catch up, and convinces him that he is the man to consult on all that is IT in his new operations, but really McCabe is on the hunt. It’s all quite strange, the blending of author and narrator in a story of such fantastic and bloody dimension, but McCabe, despite his holy charge, struggles with the morality of his quest and the potential consequences of having to kill a friend—which is the perfect moral atmosphere for a novel about justice and ambition. The novel’s ending is unusually satisfying and will lead nicely into the following installments his readers will no doubt be anticipating. An offbeat narrative whose unconventionality will entertain and dismay daring readers.
Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-1467042796
Page Count: 169
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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