by Stina Hemming ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 1, 2022
A solid series starter that never flags in its sprint to a sinister climax.
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An insurance investigator is the only thing standing between a high-powered law firm and its billion-dollar payday in Hemming’s thriller.
Nick Martin is the team leader on his prestigious Boston law firm’s Prosperity Fund initiative, which uses money from investors to buy people’s life insurance policies. Just as the Prosperity Fund stands on the verge of a billion-dollar listing on the New York Stock Exchange, Nick’s colleague (and lover) Jennifer Rose discovers that the fund is not in compliance with an obscure piece of federal legislation, rendering the sales of the life insurance policies to the fund invalid. This development sets him on a collision course with Mihkel Ivanov, a partner at the firm whose clients include KGB members and who is “notorious for his bad manners and ill-temper.” Some of the desperate people who sold their life insurance policies begin meeting untimely deaths, as do people within the firm who question the fund or want out. Nick and the fund come to the attention of Alex Greene, a Paris-based insurance investigator, described by her 13-year-old niece Hanna as “Nancy Drew on steroids.” The Prosperity case puts Alex in the crosshairs: a contract on her life is assigned to Joshua Workman, a former Mossad agent, who just happens to be a former one-night stand. In Hemming’s debut thriller, Greene makes a strong first impression. She’s a formidable action hero who feels her best when pummeling an adversary and who has a zest for sex to rival James Bond’s (“She could say ‘let’s fuck’ in any language”). Hemmings efficiently establishes Greene’s world for future adventures, giving her a backstory that includes a long-missing sister who abandoned Hanna on her doorstep. The author neglects to follow through on an early scene in which Greene trains Hanna in self-defense—the reader will want to see Hanna use those skills. But the ending is a corker that sets up a much-anticipated sequel.
A solid series starter that never flags in its sprint to a sinister climax.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2022
ISBN: 9781738736829
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Ice Queen Press
Review Posted Online: March 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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New York Times Bestseller
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
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by Liane Moriarty ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 10, 2024
A fresh, funny, ambitious, and nuanced take on some of our oldest existential questions. Cannot wait for the TV series.
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New York Times Bestseller
What would you do if you knew when you were going to die?
In the first page and a half of her latest page-turner, bestselling Australian author Moriarty introduces a large cast of fascinating characters, all seated on a flight to Sydney that’s delayed on the tarmac. There’s the “bespectacled hipster” with his arm in a cast; a very pregnant woman; a young mom with a screaming infant and a sweaty toddler; a bride and groom, still in their wedding clothes; a surly 6-year-old forced to miss a laser-tag party; a darling elderly couple; a chatty tourist pair; several others. No one even notices the woman who will later become a household name as the “Death Lady” until she hops up from her seat and begins to deliver predictions to each of them about the age they’ll be when they die and the cause of their deaths. Age 30, assault, for the hipster. Age 7, drowning, for the baby in arms. Age 43, workplace accident, for a 42-year-old civil engineer. Self-harm, age 28, for the lovely flight attendant, who is that day celebrating her 28th birthday. Over the next 126 chapters (some just a paragraph), you will get to know all these people, and their reactions to the news of their demise, very well. Best of all, you will get to know Cherry Lockwood, the Death Lady, and the life that brought her to this day. Is it true, as she repeatedly intones on the plane, that “fate won’t be fought”? Does this novel support the idea that clairvoyance is real? Does it find a means to logically dismiss the whole thing? Or is it some complex amalgam of these possibilities? Sorry, you won’t find that out here, and in fact not until you’ve turned all 500-plus pages. The story is a brilliant, charming, and invigorating illustration of its closing quote from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (we’re not going to spill that either).
A fresh, funny, ambitious, and nuanced take on some of our oldest existential questions. Cannot wait for the TV series.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9780593798607
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
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