An absorbing story of fortitude and redemption, despite a few stumbles.
A Mexican teen flees to America to evade a dangerous cartel leader in Stolinsky’s thriller.
It’s the late 1990s and 15-year-old Xochitl (whose Aztec name means “goddess of the flowers”) Gonzalez is the consort of Carlos Morales of the infamous Morales Cartel. For the last two years, she’s been “grooming” the young girls Carlos’ goons have been bringing to his large estate in Juarez, Mexico. She and her mom live there in comfort, but after witnessing the cartel leader brutally murder a 13-year-old, Xochitl is convinced she’ll inevitably suffer the same fate. She grabs cash, a gun, and a bundle of cocaine (as a potential bargaining chip) and runs for the border with two other girls. When the three make it to Texas, Xochitl struggles to find work and ultimately lands in juvenile detention. Trusting anyone is difficult as she’s certain Carlos is hunting her (the girl simply knows too much about his cartel) and any number of people could be working for him. Stolinsky’s story features a resilient young hero with understandable flaws. (Xochitl spent her youth conflicted, as she once believed Carlos loved her.) The protagonist is party to numerous sexual acts, some of which she herself initiates; the author shows restraint, implying much of what’s going on, and she doesn’t romanticize the material, even when Xochitl grows close to an older man. The straightforward narrative unfolds in the protagonist’s voice, including copious but not overwhelming slang, reading almost as if it’s a transcription. Parts of the novel are somewhat baffling, like the mention of a “one-eighty in all directions” or an incident in which Xochitl berates someone who mispronounces her name, only to then enunciate it two different ways. Still, readers will be engaged by her perilous journey to freedom.
An absorbing story of fortitude and redemption, despite a few stumbles.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2024
ISBN: 9798878909594
Page Count: 360
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2024
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
The best news of all: The climax leaves the door open to further reports from the hilariously misnamed British Intelligence.
A series of mounting complications leads to yet another fight to the death between the discarded intelligence agents of Slough House and the morally bankrupt head of MI5.
As Jackson Lamb’s motley crew on Aldersgate Street struggles to cope with the deaths of River Cartwright’s grandfather and mentor, intelligence veteran David Cartwright, and their dim, beloved colleague Min Harper, new troubles are brewing. Diana Taverner, who runs the British Intelligence Service from Regent’s Park, is being blackmailed by former MP Peter Judd to do his bidding. Nothing untoward about that, of course, but this time, Judd’s demands, backed by a compromising tape recording, are more pressing than usual. So Diana reconvenes the Brains Trust—Al Hawke, Avril Potts, Daisy Wessex, and their ex-boss Charles Cornell Stamoran—whose last assignment was to serve as the contact for psychopathic IRA informant Dougie Malone while turning a blind eye to his multiple rapes and murders, which were really none of the Crown’s business. Taverner’s new assignment for the Brains Trust is the assassination of Judd. Since all these developments are filtered through the riotously cynical lens of Herron’s imagination, nothing goes as planned, and when the smoke clears, the fatalities don’t include Judd. Now that Judd knows he has as much reason to fear Taverner as she does to fear him, Lamb offers to broker a peace meeting between them which Slough House computer geek Roddy Ho will keep secret by knocking out 37 security cameras around Taverner’s dwelling. What could possibly go wrong?
The best news of all: The climax leaves the door open to further reports from the hilariously misnamed British Intelligence.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9781641297264
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Soho Crime
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
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