Bleak, bloody, and soulless, but the plot is good.
A professional killer faces the biggest challenge of his life.
Robert Beaujolais is a 33-year-old ex-Marine who becomes a well paid contract killer—an arbiter, he calls himself—because “life post-discharge was skull-gouge boring.” Committing grisly murder comes to him easily and without emotion, because death is just a way to make a living. His one show of affection is toward fellow ex-Marine Benjamin Stephenson, his lover and only friend. Beauj receives his assignments from “Uncle,” who instructs him to kill Massimo Di Giovanni, the “archangel of Florence.” The target is, “by any conception or definition of the word, untouchable.” That’s at the core of the action. A couple of times Beauj is compared to Jason Bourne, an undeserved flattery; the Ludlum hero is sympathetic, and Beauj is not. He’s more like the Gray Man, exulting in spilling blood: “A pâté of teeth, lips and tongue exploded.” Yeah, man. “Cordite. This is what God smells like.” A woman named Gianna urges him on, saying, “I am asking you to transform into the devil,” but he’s there already. The writing itself is vivid and often playful, for example, “Playing music off his phone, a lava flow of decelerated rap that sounded like it was bubbling through tar,” and, “You are not Italian. Life is only the period between funerals.” There are also short, untranslated paragraphs in Italian, which readers will either understand, suss out, or ignore: “Che cazzo ne sai, vecchio caprone?” “Più di te, stronza amareggiata.” This is a sharp exchange, and they’re not talking about having a spot of tea. So on the plus side there’s a strong plot that moves to a high-powered conclusion. On the minus side, there is not a single character to care about. All right, maybe poor Benny, who shows touches of complexity. But Beauj’s soul may as well have been crushed by a steamroller.
Bleak, bloody, and soulless, but the plot is good.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2026
ISBN: 9780593978894
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2026
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.
What hasn’t legendary legal eagle Grisham tried yet? How about a thriller about serial kidnapping and international terrorism.
When Paul and Chelsea Tanner disappear during a day trip on their Paris honeymoon, their abductors demand a ransom of $2 million from Chelsea’s wealthy parents, and a few days later the same sum from Paul’s much less well-heeled parents. After orthopedist Lowell Clayburn, Chelsea’s father, ponies up the ransom without breathing a word to the authorities, his daughter is promptly released. But even though Paul’s parents sell their home, liquidate their assets, and borrow money from the Clayburns to meet the kidnappers’ demands, the villains hold on to Paul anyway. Asked whether he’s ever seen such an outcome in a double kidnapping, FBI deputy director Andrew Strong tells Lowell: “No, this is a new one.” But it’s not, as Strong knows all too well; it’s the third such active case, all involving honeymooning couples whose bridegrooms had served in the armed forces. After masterfully drawing readers in with his bare-knuckle account of the Tanners’ abduction and the attempt by their families and the CIA to tell the lies required to keep caring friends and the rapacious press at bay, Grisham effortlessly switches gears to follow CIA agent Rae Claire Russo and Stuart Nash, a former Department of Justice prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay who agrees to marry her so they can serve as bait for the kidnappers, whose motives include justice and revenge as well as cold hard cash. So much for the imprisoned Paul’s wistful reflection that “hopefully, it was only about money.”
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9780385550543
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2026
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
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