Leaving Viking for the storied literary patina of Scribner, current or not, King seemingly strives on the page for a less vulgar gloss. And he eases from horror into romantic suspense, while adding dollops of the supernatural. The probable model: structural echoes of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca do sound forth, although King never writes one paragraph herein to match du Maurier’s opening moonscapes of Manderley. What comes through nevertheless is a strong pull to upgrade his style and storytelling in this his 50th year. Yes, he actually does write better if with less energy and power than in Desperation (1996). In fact, attacking the race problem in lily-white Maine, he even assumes an almost Dreiserian seriousness in his final paragraphs. Well, the story: romantic-suspense novelist Michael Noonan, who summers in Castle Rock on Dark Score Lake, falls into a four-year writer’s block when his wife Johanna dies of a brain blowout. Now 40 and childless, Mike has salted away four extra novel manuscripts in his safe-deposit box, one of them 11 years old (shades of Richard Bachman!), and keeps up a pretense of productivity by publishing a “new” novel each year. Meanwhile, he finds himself falling for Mattie Devore, a widowed mother half his age. Mattie’s late husband is the son of still-thriving half-billionaire computer king Max Devore, 85 years old and monstrous, who plans to gain possession of Mattie’s three-year-old daughter, the banally drawn Kyra. Mike’s first big question: Did Johanna cuckold him during his long hours writing? If so, will her character reverse our understanding of her, as does Rebecca de Winter’s? And how can he help Mattie fight off Max and keep Kyra? The supernatural elements, largely reserved for the interracial climax, are Standard King but fairly mild. Philosophically limited but a promising artistic shift for a writer who tried something like this with 1995’s failure, Rose Madder.
Pub Date: Sept. 22, 1998
ISBN: 0-684-85350-7
Page Count: 529
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1998
The worst fear raised by this odd creature feature is that it will spawn a sequel.
When he and his widowed mother are threatened by a freakish killer, a brilliant 11-year-old boy on the autism spectrum teams with an orphaned dog with human intelligence to fight off evil.
The boy, Woody, hasn't spoken a word in his life but has created a sophisticated virtual world to escape to and can hack the most complex dark web networks. He's determined to avenge his researcher father, who died in a suspicious helicopter crash. The dog, Kipp, orphaned by the death of his aged, loving caretaker, is part of an underground canine network boasting many other similarly advanced, genetically engineered dogs. (These dogs, who call themselves the Mysterium, are capable of such miracles as retrieving books from the library and reading them at night.) Out of the blue, a man who once worked with Woody's father and briefly dated Megan, Woody's mother, propositions and then threatens her. "I am becoming the king of beasts," he boasts, after having bitten a young woman to death. There is certainly no lack of raw action in the book, Koontz's first following five novels featuring investigator Jane Hawk. It just takes a certain kind of reader to...swallow the plot. Depending on one's susceptibility to heart-tugging boy-and-dog tales, the novel will either be dismissed as a work of cloying commercial calculation or enjoyed as a crafty blend of genres.
The worst fear raised by this odd creature feature is that it will spawn a sequel.Pub Date: April 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1542019507
Page Count: 380
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Classic Unger and a surefire hit with her followers.
Unger takes her loyal readers back to The Hollows, a creepy town about 100 miles from New York City, in this tale of love gone awry.
Ian Paine writes and illustrates graphic novels and has become quite a success. His series—Fatboy and Priss—chronicles the adventures of a nerdy outcast and his gorgeous, red-haired avenger, the amoral Priss, who makes certain that no slight to Fatboy goes unpunished. Originally from The Hollows, where otherworldly events are common, Ian was the original Fatboy. He led a miserable life after his mother lost her grip on reality and smothered his baby sister, then led him to the bathtub, perhaps planning to drown him. Escaping from his mom, Ian ran into the woods, where he met Priss, a strange child with red hair; as time passed, she became his only friend. Ian was the school joke, but with weight loss and artistic success, he eventually made a new life for himself in the city. Now he's fallen in love with a woman named Megan, and she's accepted his proposal of marriage. But when his editor tells him it’s time to kill off Fatboy and Priss and start another series, he finds that Priss, who has both haunted and defended him, isn’t going to go without a fight, and that fight can get very, very ugly. Though fans may wonder why, given its history, anyone would live in The Hollows, the big question for readers will be whether or not Priss is real or simply a manifestation of a disturbed young man’s imagination. Unger’s complex novel can at times get a little confusing, with the action constantly shifting from place to place and back and forth in time, but Unger knows what her fans like and scores another bull’s eye with this one.
Classic Unger and a surefire hit with her followers.Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4516-9120-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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