Another Asian-flavored thriller from Leather (The Chinaman, 1992, etc.)—this one about Vietnam vets who form an uneasy alliance with Hong Kong triads for a big score. Under the guise of healing the psyches of four ex-vets by getting them a tour back to contemporary Vietnam, former Colonel Tyler assembles his team. Lately, the Southeast Asian Republic, desiring better relations with the US, has been encouraging American tourism. Languishing under communist rule, Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) has dwindled from ``the Paris of the Orient'' to a cracked-plaster backwater. Buildings have deteriorated, and long gone is the glitz that wartime US dollars bestowed. But, surprisingly, the impoverished populace are still pro-American. The trip, however, is all eyewash. Approached afterward by the Colonel, all four men confirm their interest in acquiring millions of dollars. Tyler knows his men: Lehman, a former helicopter pilot, is on the run from the Mafia; helicopter crew chief Lewis is dying of cancer; doorgunner Carmody is plain psychotic; and Special Forces expert Horvitz is afflicted with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). After visiting Vietnam and Thailand, Tyler ferries his men to Hong Kong, where the heist—robbing the Happy Valley racetrack—will go down. Mastermind is Anthony Chung, a brilliant, young—and very rich—Chinese with a secret agenda. Replete with surprises, the plot is revealed little by little. Or as they say in spy novels—on a need-to-know basis. Better yet, even minor characters are well-fleshed, and the portrait the author paints of shabby Saigon and sad Hong Kong exceeds that of any travel narrative. Leather goes himself one better with each outing. A detail- oriented, devious, engrossing thriller that never falters.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-671-74303-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1993
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
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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