An engagingly nerve-wracking tale with gradually escalating suspense.
In Cory’s (Facade, 2016, etc.) latest series thriller, Boston architect and amateur sleuth Iris Reid faces off against an identity thief who becomes a dangerous stalker.
Although Iris makes her living in architecture, she’s previously worked with the police on murder and kidnapping cases. But her latest is her toughest one yet, as cops arrest her for an armed bank robbery that left a guard in critical condition. Security-camera footage from a car rental service shows someone, who certainly looks like her, renting the getaway car. Iris gets out on bail, but authorities don’t seem to buy her claim that her identity was stolen. Readers know that the thief is a woman named Rosica Bakalov, who later pushes her luck by looting Iris’ savings account and severely damaging her credit. Iris begins her search for Rosica by visiting an apartment that the thief rented in Iris’ name. Rosica becomes nervous when she realizes that her pursuer is getting close, but her anxiety soon turns into resentment. She believes that Iris has the life that she should have—including a handsome, successful chef boyfriend, Luc Cormier, whose new restaurant Iris is renovating. So the thief begins to shadow her victim, and her subtle attempts to torment the architect become more overt and increasingly hazardous. By introducing the character of Rosica early, Cory forgoes mystery in favor of suspense. She effectively provides insight into the villain’s mind, revealing it to be unstable and unpredictable. She also deftly establishes Iris as a woman who’s worried about her professional reputation, and introduces a subplot about a yoga instructor who may be a bit too hands-on with Luc. Meanwhile, the plot becomes more unnerving as it progresses, and an impressive twist leads to a lengthy final act featuring Rosica at her most ferocious. Iris, who eventually gets to use the karate that she often practices, is depicted as smart and tenacious, although it turns out that the identity theft is at least partly her own fault. Cory’s concise prose establishes a consistent pace that never wavers, and even her descriptions of architecture are exhilarating.
An engagingly nerve-wracking tale with gradually escalating suspense.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-9853702-7-5
Page Count: 236
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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