A heady thriller that gathers force with the understated menace of a tidal wave, then smashes home.
In this debut medical thriller, a pair of Afghanistan War vets investigates mysterious deaths at a research center developing a new rabies vaccine.
Two and a half years ago, in the desert outside Kandahar, a bomb blast rocked the mobile communications van run by Capt. Alton Blackwell of the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Only he and Sgt. Zach Lambert, who was off shift at the time, survived. Working through physical therapy, Alton healed with a limp. Reassignment to desk duty in Kabul’s Command and Control division should have been torture, but his friendship with military accountant Mallory Wilson kept him optimistic. Now, Alton and Zach work in Georgia for the telecom security firm Kruptos Inc., and Mallory works for the FBI in Washington, D.C. She and Alton don’t reunite until strange cases of hemophilia—a bleeding disorder—break out near the Georgia-North Carolina border. Zach, who goes camping in the quiet, supposedly secluded area, discovers the source firsthand; scientists from Research Triangle Park spray him with the airborne—as well as still experimental and potentially deadly—Rabinil vaccine. With a craving for justice, Alton the cryptographer and Mallory the forensic accountant team up to investigate the fallout. They follow winding paper and electronic trails while dodging agents with a murderous agenda. Readers will be absorbed by Freeman’s never-flashy expertise: “I have a ‘rabbit hole’ application that...bounces your [laptop’s] signal all over the planet and...renders our current location untraceable for a little while.” The motives of scientists and federal employees are tightly interlocked, and humor peppers their conversations. For instance, when a man named Perkins says that Mallory is cute, Alton says, “No, she isn’t your type.” “What is her type, bro?” Perkins asks, to which Alton replies, “Intelligent.” Occasionally, superb touches of eeriness creep in: “dried leaves blowing across the parking lot began to form patterns, and the details of the investigation soon filled his mind.” One minor failing, however, is that Freeman introduces his principal characters primarily by telling readers about them rather than using dialogue and plot to flesh them out.
A heady thriller that gathers force with the understated menace of a tidal wave, then smashes home.Pub Date: March 19, 2013
ISBN: 978-1482048469
Page Count: 174
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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