No detail should be missed, no nuance overlooked in Bolton’s chilling tale of a master manipulator who leaves nothing to...
A serial killer bids for freedom with the aid of an unconventional lawyer.
From his refusal to plead either guilty or innocent at his trial for the murders of Zoe Sykes, Jessie Trout, Chloe Wood, and Myrtle Reid, suave, handsome surgeon Hamish Wolfe has confounded the police and the press by his behavior. Some speculate that he’s angling for an insanity plea. DC Peter Weston of the Avon and Somerset police insists, “He’s playing games with us.” The only thing that remains consistent before and after his conviction is Hamish’s insistence that he’s innocent, as he assures his fellow inmates at HMP Isle of Wight–Parkhurst, his family, his legion of rabid followers, including Andy Bear, Mike Shiven, Sirocco Silverwood, and a pair of travelers known only as Odi and Broon who hold rallies and sponsor fairs to argue his case in the press. Nowhere are his pleas more urgent than in his beautifully crafted letters to defense attorney Maggie Rose, famous for exonerating serial killers and repurposing her cases into bestsellers. Maggie resists Hamish’s advances, even when reinforced in person by his mother. But the more she hears, the more she reads, the more intrigued she becomes. Chapters of her next book take shape, sketching details of Hamish’s crimes, his trial, and his long-ago involvement with the Fat Club, a group of Oxford undergrads whose filming of their sexual exploits with overweight partners is the presumed back story to his murder of four overweight women. As Hamish and Maggie circle each other, it’s hard to see who’s the cat and who’s the mouse and impossible to predict where their deadly dance will lead.
No detail should be missed, no nuance overlooked in Bolton’s chilling tale of a master manipulator who leaves nothing to chance.Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-250-10342-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.
Coulter’s treasured FBI agents take on two cases marked by danger and personal involvement.
Dillon Savitch and his wife, Lacey Sherlock, have special abilities that have served them well in law enforcement (Paradox, 2018, etc.). But that doesn't prevent Sherlock’s car from hitting a running man after having been struck by a speeding SUV that runs a red light. The runner, though clearly injured, continues on his way and disappears. Not so the SUV driver, a security engineer for the Bexholt Group, which has ties to government agencies. Sherlock’s own concussion causes memory loss so severe that she doesn’t recognize Savitch or remember their son, Sean. The whole incident seems more suspicious when a blood test from the splatter of the man Sherlock hit reveals that he’s Justice Cummings, an analyst for the CIA. The agency’s refusal to cooperate makes Savitch certain that Bexholt is involved in a deep-laid plot. Meanwhile, Special Agent Griffin Hammersmith is visiting friends who run a cafe in the touristy Virginia town of Gaffers Ridge. Hammersmith, who has psychic abilities, is taken aback when he hears in his mind a woman’s cry for help. Reporter Carson DeSilva, who came to the area to interview a Nobel Prize winner, also has psychic abilities, and she overhears the thoughts of Rafer Bodine, a young man who has apparently kidnapped and possibly murdered three teenage girls. Unluckily, she blurts out her thoughts, and she’s snatched and tied up in a cellar by Bodine. Bodine may be a killer, but he’s also the nephew of the sheriff and the son of the local bigwig. So the sheriff arrests Hammersmith and refuses to accept his FBI credentials. Bodine's mother has psychic powers strong enough to kill, but she meets her match in Hammersmith, DeSilva, Savitch, and Sherlock.
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.Pub Date: July 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9365-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
Striking a far less hysterical tone than in The Shining, King has written his most sweeping horror novel in The Stand, though it may lack the spinal jingles of Salem's Lot. In part this is because The Stand, with its flow of hundreds of brand-name products, is a kind of inventory of American culture. "Superflu" has hit the U.S. and the world, rapidly wiping out the whole of civilization—excepting the one-half of one percent who are immune. Superflu is a virus with a shifting antigen base; that is, it can kill every type of antibody the human organism can muster against it. Immunity seems to be a gift from God—or the Devil. The Devil himself has become embodied in a clairvoyant called Randall Flagg, a phantom-y fellow who walks highways and is known variously as "the dark man" or "the Walking Dude" and who has set up a new empire in Las Vegas where he rules by fear, his hair giving off sparks while he floats in the lotus position. He is very angry because the immune folks in the Free Zone up at Boulder have sent a small force against him; they get their message from Him (God) through a dying black crone named Abigail, who is also clairvoyant. There are only four in this Boulder crew, led by Stu Redman from East Texas, who is in love with pregnant Fran back in the Free Zone. Good and Evil come to an atomic clash at the climax, the Book of Revelations working itself out rather too explicitly. But more importantly, there are memorable scenes of the superflu spreading hideously, Fifth Avenue choked with dead cars, Flagg's minions putting up fresh lightbulbs all over Vegas. . . . Some King fans will be put off by the pretensions here; most will embrace them along with the earthier chilis.
Pub Date: Nov. 3, 1978
ISBN: 0307743683
Page Count: 1450
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1978
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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