Between murderous power shifts, the novel’s repeated operative phrase is How does it work?—followed by endless financial...
Whatcha gonna do when you come out of church, having just eulogized your late boss at his funeral, and your limousine blows up in your face? And it’s only page three of a novel you’re Chairman of?
Well, what you’ll know is that you’re being kicked about as hero of a Frey (Shadow Account, 2003) megabillions-melodrama spilling with slimy financial hocus-pocus. But how can a thriller find climactic TNT for its plot if it sets off dynamite in Scene One? Christian Gillette—36 and greedier than Wall Street’s Gordon Gekko—has just replaced murdered Bill Donovan as chairman of the gigantic private equity company Everest Capital. That’s Everest, as in highest mountain, which Everest plans to become the equivalent of in confidential high-risk capital investment. For readers, icy Gillette is a tough sell. Bill Donovan used to log in 80-hour weeks with no vacations, and now even Gillette’s two girlfriends of the past ten years drop him for lack of quality companionship time. The plot turns on the fact that three other top men in Everest—Ben Cohen, Troy Mason and Nigel Faraday—might have been voted in as chairman, and one may have turned dirty. Still, we might find Donovan’s widow, with her fabulous inheritance, available for top slot as villain. Could she—or someone—be making a deal with the rival Strazzi company? But Troy Mason’s clean—because Gillette fires him on the spot when he sees him having carnal relations with Kathy Hays in the cellar during the funeral reception at Donovan’s house. Everest owns its private surveillance and security company, McGuire and Company, which may have become greedy itself. And what of the Canadian oil reserves that Everest dickers over? Is that deal going south? Hey, even Gillette’s not bulletproof. It may not be TNT, but Frey does provide a spectacular twist at the end.
Between murderous power shifts, the novel’s repeated operative phrase is How does it work?—followed by endless financial analyis and talk, talk, talk.Pub Date: March 29, 2005
ISBN: 0-345-45760-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2005
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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