Give this toothless suburban thriller a pass.
Lies, adultery, and murder roil a Hudson Valley neighborhood in Lapena’s (An Unwanted Guest, 2018, etc.) latest domestic thriller.
Sixteen-year-old Raleigh Sharpe has been breaking into homes and hacking into computers to send prank emails. His father, Paul, is keen to minimize, or avoid altogether, any legal fallout, but mom Olivia feels terrible and is convinced that, at the very least, an apology is in order. Without consulting Paul or Raleigh, Olivia writes anonymous apology letters and delivers them to homes that Raleigh targeted. When the bludgeoned body of Amanda Pierce is discovered in the trunk of a submerged vehicle, the neighborhood comes under scrutiny. After all, two weeks ago, Amanda’s husband, Robert, reported her missing after she didn’t return from a girls’ weekend, and now he’s a prime suspect in her death. His is also one of the homes that Raleigh broke into, and of course Raleigh left his fingerprints all over the place. It’s quickly revealed that Robert, an attorney, is hiding something, or a lot of somethings. He’s been sleeping with his next-door neighbor Becky, whose husband, Larry, was having an affair with Amanda. Amanda was young, beautiful, inspired seething jealousy from the other wives, and had a reputation for promiscuity, as pretty murdered women so often do. It’s an adultery merry-go-round in Aylesford, New York, and Detectives Webb and Moen (no first names and minimal personalities) have their hands full with this lively bunch. Lots of wagging mouths spreading salacious rumors set up a few nicely placed red herrings, and Olivia’s efforts, with the help of her friend Glenda, to keep poor coddled Raleigh out of the long arms of the law add angst. Unfortunately, Lapena doesn’t give readers any meaty characters to sink their teeth into or even really root for, and readers will likely see the big twist coming a mile away.
Give this toothless suburban thriller a pass.Pub Date: July 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-55765-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Box handles this foolproof formula with complete assurance, keeping the pot at a full boil until the perfunctory,...
The creator of Wyoming Fish and Game Warden Joe Pickett (Breaking Point, 2013, etc.) works the area around Yellowstone National Park in this stand-alone about a long-haul trucker with sex and murder on his mind.
The Lizard King, as he calls himself, normally targets lot lizards—prostitutes who work the parking lots adjacent to the rest stops that dot interstate highways. But he’s more than happy to move up to a higher class of victim when he runs across the Sullivan sisters. Danielle, 18, and Gracie, 16, are supposed to be driving from their mother’s home in Denver to their father’s in Omaha, but Danielle has had the bright idea of heading instead to Bozeman, Mont., to visit her boyfriend, Justin Hoyt. Far from home, their whereabouts known to only a few people, the girls are the perfect victims even before they nearly collide with the Lizard King’s rig and Danielle flips him off. Hours later, very shortly after he’s caught up with them in the depths of Yellowstone and done his best to eradicate every trace of his abduction, Justin, worried that Danielle refused his last phone call, tells his father that something bad has happened. Cody Hoyt, an investigator for the Lewis and Clark County Sheriff’s Department, is already having a tough day: At the insistence of his crooked boss, Sheriff Tubman, his longtime student and new partner, Cassandra Dewell, has just caught him planting evidence in an unrelated murder, and he’s been suspended from his job. If he’s lost his badge, though, Cody’s got plenty of time on his hands to drive downstate and meet with State Trooper Rick Legerski, the ex-husband of his dispatcher’s sister, to talk about what to do next. And so the countdown begins.
Box handles this foolproof formula with complete assurance, keeping the pot at a full boil until the perfunctory, anticlimactic and unsatisfactory ending.Pub Date: July 30, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-312-58320-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
BOOK TO SCREEN
Bulky, balky, talky.
In an updated quest for the Holy Grail, the narrative pace remains stuck in slo-mo.
But is the Grail, in fact, holy? Turns out that’s a matter of perspective. If you’re a member of that most secret of clandestine societies, the Priory of Sion, you think yes. But if your heart belongs to the Roman Catholic Church, the Grail is more than just unholy, it’s downright subversive and terrifying. At least, so the story goes in this latest of Brown’s exhaustively researched, underimagined treatise-thrillers (Deception Point, 2001, etc.). When Harvard professor of symbology Robert Langdon—in Paris to deliver a lecture—has his sleep interrupted at two a.m., it’s to discover that the police suspect he’s a murderer, the victim none other than Jacques Saumière, esteemed curator of the Louvre. The evidence against Langdon could hardly be sketchier, but the cops feel huge pressure to make an arrest. And besides, they don’t particularly like Americans. Aided by the murdered man’s granddaughter, Langdon flees the flics to trudge the Grail-path along with pretty, persuasive Sophie, who’s driven by her own need to find answers. The game now afoot amounts to a scavenger hunt for the scholarly, clues supplied by the late curator, whose intent was to enlighten Sophie and bedevil her enemies. It’s not all that easy to identify these enemies. Are they emissaries from the Vatican, bent on foiling the Grail-seekers? From Opus Dei, the wayward, deeply conservative Catholic offshoot bent on foiling everybody? Or any one of a number of freelancers bent on a multifaceted array of private agendas? For that matter, what exactly is the Priory of Sion? What does it have to do with Leonardo? With Mary Magdalene? With (gulp) Walt Disney? By the time Sophie and Langdon reach home base, everything—well, at least more than enough—has been revealed.
Bulky, balky, talky.Pub Date: March 18, 2003
ISBN: 0-385-50420-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2003
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