An action-packed continuation of a series that blends noir and cyberpunk elements.
Security chief Cain and politician Francesca Pieralisi investigate seawall sabotage in the fourth book in James’ thriller series.
In a futuristic version of Europe where rising sea levels have caused mass food scarcity, the European Seawall Project is finally underway. Once the wall is constructed, lands reclaimed from the ocean will be rehabilitated into farmland to provide more food for the European people. However, workers have seemingly been sabotaging the drones working on the wall, increasing tensions between the drone company, the workers’ union, and police-for-hire, as well as delaying the project. Trust is low, and no one’s talking to one another. As a prominent politician involved in the project, Francesca is sent to Worker Village 1—a floating city on which wall workers reside—to investigate the situation. Unfortunately, as seen in the previous installment, An Uncalculated Risk (2025), Francesca violated the law and caused the death of an agent, so she’s on thin ice with project head Paul Devouard. Her security clearance has been reduced, and she’s been given explicit instructions to everything past Paul before taking any actions. This means that she must decide what matters more: the system itself or making a lasting impact for the people residing within it. She works in tandem with Cain, her security chief and boyfriend, who is as happy to steer Francesca towards restaurants and bars he prefers as he is to threaten someone who refuses to help her. Over the course of the novel, James does an excellent job of showing what life is like when power players choose not to play by the rules. Francesca’s investigation turns up little to no evidence, and as workers refuse to talk to her, but nonstop action—including tense encounters with the cops stationed on the Worker Village and a foot chase that ends with Cain dangling a worker off the roof of a building—keep the action moving. Furthermore, a shocking twist late in the book is certain to generate excitement for the next book in the series.
An action-packed continuation of a series that blends noir and cyberpunk elements.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2025
ISBN: 9798296243324
Page Count: 308
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 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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