In the third thriller featuring Winston Sage, the former physician/epidemiologist joins a task force looking at a probable agro-terrorist plot in the U.S.
FBI Agent Dan Tilikso interrupts Win’s retirement in Santa Fe with a call to ask for his assistance. Having previously worked with Tilikso on a bioterrorist attack, Win flies to Washington, D.C., to help deal with an apparent threat to American agribusiness. He and other members of the Agro-terrorism Task Force scrutinize four recent cases of an “extremely rare” variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Since the victims’ exposure likely occurred at least a decade earlier and no additional cases have surfaced, Win determines the variant CJD was someone’s trial run. Meanwhile, a terrorist group is planning an economic strike against U.S. agriculture. It’s propagating various infectious agents via livestock on a Yemen farm while American-born jihadi pilots will initiate the “spraying program” to infect U.S. wheat fields. Aiding the group is Abdullah, a Pakistani with ties to the variant CJD cases. He, however, has animosity for the Brits; as a British citizen, he’s reportedly faced discrimination against people of color. While Win tries to determine the terrorists’ point of attack, the task force learns about Abdullah and realizes the U.K. may be in danger of his lethal vengeance. As in preceding installments like The Bag Boys’ Jihad (2018), Grufferman favors short scenes and chapters that help to keep his story moving briskly. Entailing myriad debates on strategy from both the good guys and bad, the narrative favors dialogue over description. The story is nevertheless consistently enthralling, giving ample space to the villains’ unnerving perspective, including a growing distrust of Abdullah—not a true believer—that could lead to his murder. Though Win occasionally sits out the narrative for villaincentric and England-set sequences, he remains a worthy hero for his deductive reasoning. Even his argument against immediately suspecting terrorism is sound, though readers are already aware of terrorist involvement.
A fast-paced series entry with an exemplary protagonist.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: April 28, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: POLITICAL, MILITARY & TERRORISM | THRILLER
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A bloody and grotesque but ultimately entertaining and inspiring take on horror movies, trauma, and self-determination.
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Serial killer survivors are forced to cooperate when they’re dragged screaming back into jeopardy.
You have to give it to Hendrix, author of The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires (2020), for tapping into his deep knowledge of horror films and fiction to find a new angle on the tropes of terror with every outing. In the same way Edgar Cantero lampooned Scooby Doo in Meddling Kids (2017), this scary unraveling aims straight for the sheer terrors the best slasher films create. Here, Hendrix has zeroed in on the so-called “final girl,” the sole survivor of a horrific massacre—you’re already thinking of Jamie Lee Curtis in the Halloween movies or Sigourney Weaver in Alien. This book is even more skin-crawling, as deeply paranoid Lynnette Tarkington (impaled on an antler trophy during her first unfortunate encounter years ago) reluctantly participates in group therapy sessions with Dr. Carol Elliot along with fellow survivors Marilyn Torres, who has buried her emotions in wealth; Dani Shipman, who might have killed the wrong person; Julia Campbell, whose encounter left her in a wheelchair; and Heather DeLuca, who is succumbing to addiction. Hendrix can be tongue-in-cheek (see Horrorstör, 2014) but is deadly serious here while still warping the conventions of the genre, including the fact that some of the survivors have participated in graphic horror flicks depicting their very real traumas. The book is creepy enough on its face, but Hendrix’s use of expedient narrative tools, including a laconic cowboy lawman, an overly eager journalist, and a host of archetypal serial killers, heightens the unease. After one member of this vigilant sisterhood is murdered and a series of oddly prescient attacks threaten the rest, Lynnette becomes increasingly suspicious that the attacks are originating way too close to their inner circle. “Does this ever end?” Lynnette asks. “Will there always be someone out there turning little boys into monsters? Will we always be final girls? Will there always be monsters killing us? How do we stop the snake from eating its own tail?”
A bloody and grotesque but ultimately entertaining and inspiring take on horror movies, trauma, and self-determination.Pub Date: July 13, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-20123-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
Categories: SUSPENSE | THRILLER | SUSPENSE | PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE
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A blend of psychological mystery and gothic thriller puts a psychotherapist in pursuit of a serial killer on the campus of Cambridge University.
The author’s second novel features a psychotherapist as its main character, as did his 2019 debut, The Silent Patient (whose main character makes an appearance here). This book’s protagonist is Mariana, who has a busy practice in London specializing in group therapy. At 36, she’s a widow, reeling from the drowning a year before of her beloved husband, Sebastian. She’s galvanized out of her fog by a call from her niece, Zoe, who was raised by Mariana and Sebastian after her parents died. Zoe is now studying at Cambridge, where Mariana and Sebastian met and courted. Zoe has terrible news: Her close friend Tara has been murdered, savagely stabbed and dumped in a wood. Mariana heads for Cambridge and, when the police arrest someone she thinks is innocent, starts her own investigation. She zeroes in on Edward Fosca, a handsome, charismatic classics professor who has a cultlike following of beautiful female students (which included Tara) called the Maidens, a reference to the cult of Eleusis in ancient Greece, whose followers worshipped Demeter and Persephone. Suspicious characters seem to be around every ivy-covered corner of the campus, though—an audacious young man Mariana meets on the train, one of her patients who has turned stalker, a porter at one of the college’s venerable houses, even the surly police inspector. The book gets off to a slow start, front-loaded with backstories and a Cambridge travelogue, but then picks up the pace and piles up the bodies. With its ambience of ritualistic murders, ancient myths, and the venerable college, the story is a gothic thriller despite its contemporary setting. That makes Mariana tough to get on board with—she behaves less like a modern professional woman than a 19th-century gothic heroine, a clueless woman who can be counted on in any situation to make the worst possible choice. And the book’s ending, while surprising, also feels unearned, like a bolt from the blue hurled by some demigod.
Eerie atmosphere isn’t enough to overcome an unsatisfying plot and sometimes-exasperating protagonist.Pub Date: June 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-250-30445-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
Categories: SUSPENSE | PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER | SUSPENSE | THRILLER | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | GENERAL FICTION
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