A frenetic and timely story that illustrates how a house divided cannot stand.
Dimodica (Accidental Evils, 2017) offers a thriller about a growing nationalistic movement in today’s Germany.
The story opens with several European Union officials murdered in Germany, and the country’s intelligence agency says videos taking credit for the assassinations feature an Arabic voice that refers to “the Dar al-Harb, or House of War.” These incidents, combined with German resentment against EU–mandated immigration, seem likely to affect an upcoming national election. Meanwhile, a long-simmering conspiracy is brewing, involving a group of female Nazi descendants called “das Netzwerk,” embodied by a shadowy figure named Gerhardt, who attempts to gain the support of disenchanted Germans. The women of das Netzwerk are conspiring with a Saudi Arabian intelligence agent, Sharif Ali, who’s arranging terrorist activities to inflame the populace. Meanwhile, Terry Solak, an American CIA agent, is working with a German intelligence operative, known only as “Otto,” to investigate the EU killings, and they soon find that cracking this conspiracy involves much more than simply rounding up the usual suspects. This fast-paced thriller’s greatest asset is its feeling of authenticity. Dimodica spent 20 years in Special Forces and military intelligence, and his experience effectively informs his descriptions of the details of Terry’s mission in a strange land. He also makes eminently clear how a lack of communication among the government operatives, police, and military agencies helps the plot to develop as far as it does—an observation that may have come from Dimodica’s own encounters with bureaucracy. The author presents fully developed characters on both sides, resisting the temptation to turn the conspirators into mere cartoons. Especially winning is Terry’s CIA handler, Evie Khazemi, a Muslim woman who’s eager to follow the evidence, wherever it goes. The narrative ratchets up the tension as the specter of Nazism looms over a divided nation, and what results is a chilling cautionary tale about where xenophobia can lead.
A frenetic and timely story that illustrates how a house divided cannot stand.Pub Date: Dec. 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-648-70228-3
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Leschenault Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2019
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
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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