A fresh concept and protagonist that breathe life into a conventional but exciting actioner.
In Marquis’ debut thriller, a man hoping to confront the author who plagiarized his unpublished work winds up in the middle of a CIA operation to take down Russian mobsters.
Unemployed geologist Nick Lassiter knows one thing for sure: the story portrayed in the new film Subterranean Storm is highly similar to his unpublished manuscript, Blind Thrust. Convinced that celebrated author Cameron Beckett, whose latest novel was the movie’s source text, pilfered his story, Nick and his pals head to New York. Nick just wants an apology from Beckett, but causing a scene at a book signing indirectly incites the Russian Mafia. They’ve got their hooks in Beckett’s agent, Anton De Benedictis, whose gambling brother has racked up significant debt. Nick’s CIA father, Austin Brewbaker, is working an operation involving De Benedictis and the Russians, but he struggles to keep his son, his son’s friends, and Nick’s ex-girlfriend—and CIA asset—Natalie Perkins safe. There’s a lot going on in Marquis’ book, as the author smartly builds off a solid premise. De Benedictis, for one, is also Natalie’s boss, while Nick has issues to work out with his ex as well as his estranged father. Nick’s initial goal seems over-the-top—he treks from Denver to the Big Apple just for Beckett to explain himself—but it’s actually quite reasonable. Nick is a realist and knows that a lawsuit against Beckett will likely go nowhere; readers, meanwhile, know without a doubt that Beckett indeed got his novel idea from Nick’s manuscript (courtesy of a slush pile). Russian thugs, with Alexei Popov at the helm, become a stronger presence in the story’s latter half, a decidedly more intense (albeit a smidge less original) turn that features Austin, and even Nick and Natalie, engaged in gunfights and a riveting car chase with the Russians. The story can occasionally be repetitive: Beckett is frequently compared to James Patterson, and Nick et al. either discuss their hastily created group (the title’s namesake) or chant its moniker a few too many times. Still, in Nick, unpublished authors have a formidable ally.
A fresh concept and protagonist that breathe life into a conventional but exciting actioner.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-943593-00-2
Page Count: 373
Publisher: Mountain Sopris Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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