If Bret Easton Ellis wrote a biothriller.
A nasty post-pandemic New York, with plenty of Patrón tequila and cocaine.
Meet Catherine. The daughter of a bathroom fixture heiress and a drug-company whistleblower, she's been "running up her credit card balance, sweeping into parties at Fashion Week, topless sunbathing on the terrace in Positano." Then comes the outbreak of TX, a virulent flu that has killed 300 million worldwide, now barely contained by the government, with all of Newark turned into a quarantine zone. New York is filled with street vendors selling face masks, "propagators" who cough and spit on purpose, and screening centers for the Department of Health. Unfortunately, Catherine's mother spent all the family money before she died, so Catherine accepts a job from a man named Mercer, whose "deep-set teal eyes were like gaudy buttons sewn in their sockets." She'll be working the phones for Pursuit, a luxury concierge service that procures disease-free vacations, restaurant reservations, and such for ultrarich men. But Catherine's been coughing and worries that she's caught the bug, so she agrees to have an experimental anti-viral device implanted in her lower back before she can start. From this point, the plot moves quickly through increasingly violent scenarios—beginning with a disturbing game that involves sitting in the crow's nest of an abandoned upstate motel, doing drugs, and shooting money and pellets at the local proletariat. "The HideAway isn't just fun with guns. It's about satisfaction, power—staying healthy," a creep named Chad explains. Soon, Catherine's on the run from her sleazy employers, desperate to get that weird thing out of her back, with violence mounting to the last page. Antrim's (The Headmaster Ritual, 2007) eerie descriptions of a decaying Manhattan and obsession with smells—"that brown-sugar odor she liked, plus an old, airless funk, like the inside of an old shoe"; "fresh paint and the tart, synthetic aroma of new carpet"; "dried sweat, coffee, and menthol soap"—balance the increasingly headlong narrative.
If Bret Easton Ellis wrote a biothriller.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-941393-28-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Regan Arts
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2015
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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