Great villains and family drama elevate this espionage thriller above standard spy-game fare.
A child custody case spirals into a national crisis in Manning’s spy thriller.
In this installment of the author’s Kolya Petrov series, the story opens with Kolya’s fiancée, Alex Feinstein, receiving a panicked call: Alex’s best friend from high school, Yael, has just had her baby taken away by the police and CPS, and even though the two haven’t spoken in years, Yael is convinced that Alex is the only lawyer who can help. Alex is reluctant to get involved—especially considering how evasive Yael is being about where her husband, Brody, is and what he does for work—but Yael convinces her to come to New York. Meanwhile, an intrigued Kolya uses his espionage skills, honed by his work with the Executive Covert Agency, to look into Brody. He quickly discovers that Brody’s boss is Victor Forest, a man who seems to leave no digital footprint. “This was beyond bland,” Kolya thinks to himself. “This was spook territory.” When Kolya’s colleagues reveal that Forest is actually a former CIA agent and the current head of a dangerous domestic terrorism ring known as the American Gold Posse, he rushes to meet Alex in New York. As Kolya and his team’s investigation uncovers a chilling plot, Alex tries to find a way to help her old friend and support her fiancé—but no one is safe. Kolya’s storyline follows the conventional lines of an espionage thriller, but Manning manages to imbue even his simple social media searches with great tension. The villains are characterized by a chilling (and timely) blend of patriotism, aggression, and conspiracy theory-fueled lunacy. The heart of the story is the emotionally charged court custody battle—one made even more intriguing by the involvement of a haughty and hot-tempered social worker, Barbara, who doesn’t “really like babies all that much.” Everything leads to the ticking bombs and shootouts that are staples of the genre, but the skillful combination of wildly different elements makes for a fun and fresh read.
Great villains and family drama elevate this espionage thriller above standard spy-game fare.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781970286007
Page Count: 376
Publisher: Misbehavin' Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
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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