An audacious, apocalyptic tale that will electrify SF, horror, and thriller fans alike.
Blending elements from three genres, this sequel pits a physician and amateur sleuth against a viral-like illness that, if left unchecked, could annihilate the human race within a matter of days.
As the novel begins, Hope Allerd—the chief of the Infectious Diseases Division in the Department of Internal Medicine at the University Medical School in Birmingham, Alabama—finds herself suspended from her position. She faces potential prison time for malfeasance involving a foundation she began to provide care for indigent people in the Caribbean. But as she attempts to extract herself from her legal entanglements, she becomes aware of a bizarre outbreak spreading across the globe that seems to have its epicenter in Birmingham. Most victims have fevers, respiratory ailments, and a penchant for chewing other people’s faces off before they die. But others seem to have supernaturally enhanced cognition, strength, and agility—and have bodies that slowly transform into nightmarish monstrosities. As Allerd races to uncover the truth and a cure for the horror-inducing plague with her on-again, off-again boyfriend, journalist Clive Andrew, and courageous Centers for Disease Control and Prevention investigator Connie Wu, she realizes that humankind’s time as the dominant race on the planet may have already come to an end. The seamless fusion of SF, horror, and medical thriller storylines makes this a virtually un-put-down-able read. At one point, Allerd encounters one of the plague’s grotesque survivors: “The form, an inky homunculus shape with arched back, head turned full round toward her, coal-black eyes, and quiet as a whisper, perched on the ceiling. A living breathing fun-house gargoyle.” Thornton obviously knows what powers a superb thriller—relentless pacing, nonstop action, an impressive amount of bombshell plot twists, and an emotionally connective main character that readers can identify with and root for.
An audacious, apocalyptic tale that will electrify SF, horror, and thriller fans alike.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2021
ISBN: 979-8491897872
Page Count: 327
Publisher: Independently Published
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Intrigue, murder, and vengeance make for a darkly enjoyable read.
A woman’s life takes a stunning turn and a wall comes tumbling down in this tense Cold War spy drama.
In Berlin in 1989, the wall is about to crumble, and Anne Simpson’s husband, Stefan Koehler, goes missing. She is a translator working with refugees from the communist bloc, and he is a piano tuner who travels around Europe with orchestras. Or so he claims. German intelligence service the BND and America’s CIA bring her in for questioning, wrongly thinking she’s protecting him. Soon she begins to learn more about Stefan, whom she had met in the Netherlands a few years ago. She realizes he’s a “gregarious musician with easy charm who collected friends like a beachcomber collects shells, keeping a few, discarding most.” Police find his wallet in a canal and his prized zither in nearby bushes but not his body. Has he been murdered? What’s going on? And why does the BND care? If Stefan is alive, he’s in deep trouble, because he’s believed to be working for the Stasi. She’s told “the dead have a way of showing up. It is only the living who hide.” And she’s quite believable when she wonders, “Can you grieve for someone who betrayed you?” Smart and observant, she notes that the reaction by one of her interrogators is “as false as his toupee. Obvious, uncalled for, and easily put on.” Lurking behind the scenes is the Matchmaker, who specializes in finding women—“American. Divorced. Unhappy,” and possibly having access to Western secrets—who will fall for one of his Romeos. Anne is the perfect fit. “The matchmaker turned love into tradecraft,” a CIA agent tells her. But espionage is an amoral business where duty trumps decency, and “deploring the morality of spies is like deploring violence in boxers.” It’s a sentiment John le Carré would have endorsed, but Anne may have the final word.
Intrigue, murder, and vengeance make for a darkly enjoyable read.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64313-865-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pegasus Crime
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
Vintage King: a pleasure for his many fans and not a bad place to start if you’re new to him.
The master of supernatural disaster returns with four horror-laced novellas.
The protagonist of the title story, Holly Gibney, is by King’s own admission one of his most beloved characters, a “quirky walk-on” who quickly found herself at the center of some very unpleasant goings-on in End of Watch, Mr. Mercedes, and The Outsider. The insect-licious proceedings of the last are revisited, most yuckily, while some of King’s favorite conceits turn up: What happens if the dead are never really dead but instead show up generation after generation, occupying different bodies but most certainly exercising their same old mean-spirited voodoo? It won’t please TV journalists to know that the shape-shifting bad guys in that title story just happen to be on-the-ground reporters who turn up at very ugly disasters—and even cause them, albeit many decades apart. Think Jack Torrance in that photo at the end of The Shining, and you’ve got the general idea. “Only a coincidence, Holly thinks, but a chill shivers through her just the same,” King writes, “and once again she thinks of how there may be forces in this world moving people as they will, like men (and women) on a chessboard.” In the careful-what-you-wish-for department, Rat is one of those meta-referential things King enjoys: There are the usual hallucinatory doings, a destiny-altering rodent, and of course a writer protagonist who makes a deal with the devil for success that he thinks will outsmart the fates. No such luck, of course. Perhaps the most troubling story is the first, which may cause iPhone owners to rethink their purchases. King has gone a far piece from the killer clowns and vampires of old, with his monsters and monstrosities taking on far more quotidian forms—which makes them all the scarier.
Vintage King: a pleasure for his many fans and not a bad place to start if you’re new to him.Pub Date: April 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3797-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
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