The superb cast propels a worthwhile mystery offset by a few too many tangents.
A London-based fixer investigates unrelated deaths that stir up numerous questions in Ruckus’ thriller, the second in the Mercenaries in Suits series.
Chance Yang is a “part-time fixer” living in London. It’s been less than a year since his former job brought him to England and into a stalker case involving his now-girlfriend Catherine Roxborough. Chance’s latest gig comes courtesy of Catherine’s university professor uncle, Alexander Roxborough, whose friend, Lewis Milken, asks Chance to look into the death of his older sister, Emma. She allegedly died of tuberculosis while teaching in Barcelona, but the family has troublingly few details about her illness and passing. The fixer hops onto a plane and manages to shed some light on the case, but it’s not long before someone else needs his help back in London. Another friend of Catherine’s uncle’s, this one a detective named Nigel Weatherby, is stymied by a deceptively simple murder—a fatal stabbing, followed immediately by the assailant’s accidental death as he sped away. The crime scene teems with unexplainable details: Accessories for a digital audio recorder (power adapter, operating manual) are present, but the device itself is suspiciously missing. At the detective’s suggestion, Chance goes undercover as a private math tutor to get close to a wealthy family that may have answers. As his ex-boss, Felipe Kazama, puts it, Chance is “damn good at worming information out of people” (Felipe, the comic highlight of the previous book in the series, remains a reliable font of advice, even if he buries it in self-indulgent diatribes). Ever-patient Chance knows that if he continues working his case, he’ll eventually hit on a clue that leads to an illuminating revelation.
Like the series’ introduction, A Chinese Remedy (2021), this sophomore installment moves at a leisurely pace. The well-established characters are dynamic—emotions run high when Catherine, who once caught her fiancé cheating on her, is convinced by a rumor that Chance has been equally unfaithful. Chance’s jobs usually aren’t the narrative’s focus, which instead spotlights such story elements as his relationship with Catherine and Felipe’s monopolization of discussions with long-winded dialogue. The novel is split into two interlinked stories: The first (and shorter of the two) centers on the Barcelona case and concludes with a solid wrap-up. The considerably longer second story, which opens with the detective’s murder case, features much more of Felipe. He’s indisputably intelligent and occasionally witty, and characters often recall insightful snippets from his lectures that become de facto guidelines, such as the “art of distraction is always more important than lies.” But in other instances, Felipe takes over the plot, as when his “weekend leadership bootcamp” spins off into political rants that last for pages. Nevertheless, the story does find a resolution as the final act provides a shocking character turn and a memorable denouement.
The superb cast propels a worthwhile mystery offset by a few too many tangents.Pub Date: June 16, 2022
ISBN: 9781915338235
Page Count: 505
Publisher: UK Book Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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