Two psychos enter, and one psycho leaves. Good entertainment for readers with a penchant for mayhem, piles of bodies and a...
Tom Clancy meets Robin Cook in a thriller that should find a place in many beach bags this summer.
Debut novelist Hayes brings well-refined storytelling chops to the enterprise: He’s written numerous screenplays, including Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Indeed, while reading this novel, one gets the sense it was written to turn into a screenplay or perhaps began life that way, what with its shifting points of view and a narrator who may or may not be reliable. Whatever the case, Hayes gets us into the thick of things right away: Pilgrim, a federal agent, is a brilliant student of the human psyche who just happens to have awesome killing skills that he’s practiced on several continents; in Moscow, for instance, he recounts, “even though I was young and inexperienced I killed my boss like a professional.” Don’t give him a bad performance review, then. He finds plenty of scope for his talents when put up against a former mujahedeen ominously code-named The Saracen, who’s resolved to wreak all kinds of havoc on the West for its offenses against Islam. He’s a bad, bad man—the fact that he wasn’t killed in the war along with a million other Afghans, Hayes writes, “would make most people question if not God’s existence at least His common sense.” Hayes is a master of the extremely gruesome scene—the opening involves an acid bath, and later we get popped eyeballs, beheadings and all kinds of grisliness. The story does go on a hundred pages too long and gets sidelined here and there, but it has considerable strengths, and the author gets points for avoiding at least some clichés and putting a few Arabs into key good-guy (or good-girl) positions.
Two psychos enter, and one psycho leaves. Good entertainment for readers with a penchant for mayhem, piles of bodies and a lethal biochemical agent or two.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4391-7772-3
Page Count: 624
Publisher: Emily Bestler/Atria
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
Part budding romance, part compelling backstory, part prescient tale of racism: provocative on all fronts without being...
In the wake of family tragedy, does an oldest sister’s disappearance point to something even more nefarious?
As a child in Bartonville, Oregon, Emily Mills saw something terrible that she hasn’t been able to forget for 20 years. Even worse than seeing the body of her father, who was white, hanging from a tree in the backyard was seeing her older sister, Tara, at the scene of the crime. Tara leaves town and isn’t heard from again, so Emily can’t ask what she was doing there the fateful night their father was murdered. When their mother takes her own life shortly afterward, Emily and her youngest sister, Madison, never recover from the multiple traumas. Although they do their best to go on running Barton Diner, the family restaurant, Emily fears that her questions may never be answered. Though Chet Carlson was caught and eventually confessed to the crime, he’s still in prison when history seems to repeat itself through a double murder of interracial couple Sean and Lindsay Fitch, with Emily once again cast as the person who finds the bodies. Sean has a KKK sign carved into his head, which reminds Emily of whisperings about her father's racist connections. How else might the crimes be related? Rightfully not trusting the police to do a thorough investigation, Emily calls the FBI, which dispatches agents Zander Wells and Ava McLane to investigate. Elliot (Bred in the Bone, 2019) seems less interested in setting Emily up as part of the crime than in pairing her romantically with Zander. That’s just as well, because the who and why of the crimes feels almost incidental rather than displaying a deeper connection to any larger theme.
Part budding romance, part compelling backstory, part prescient tale of racism: provocative on all fronts without being quite satisfying on any.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5420-0672-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
Be warned: It's a stay-up-all-night kind of book. Compulsively readable.
Amy Whey’s sins come back to haunt her when she’s extorted for money by a beautiful stranger in Jackson’s (The Almost Sisters, 2017, etc.) first thriller.
It was supposed to be book club as usual: a group of suburban mothers gathering to talk over a glass of wine or two and then going home to bed. But when new neighbor Angelica Roux shows up at hostess Amy’s door, it doesn’t take long for all hell to break loose. The booze flows freely, and soon the women are engaged in a game: What is the worst thing you did today? This week? This month? In your life? There are many women in the gathering with secrets to protect, but none more than Amy, who, as a teenager, committed a terrible crime that almost destroyed her. Saved by her love for diving, and then by meeting her husband and stepdaughter, Amy has worked hard to build a normal, stable life; she even has a new baby. Angelica has come to threaten all of this; she clearly knows about Amy’s past and will expose her to her loved ones if Amy doesn’t pay her. As Amy tries desperately to outscheme Angelica, she also realizes just how much she has to fight for—and what she might be willing to do to keep her family safe and her secrets buried. Jackson’s novel is chock-full of dramatic reveals and twisty turns, but she paces them out well, dropping them like regularly spaced bombshells. Just when the reader thinks they know what might lie at the heart of the novel, the ground shifts seismically, and the truth removes again to a distance. It’s skillfully done. Amy herself is an openly flawed and relatable character fighting to keep sacred the one thing she values most: her normal, loving, messy life.
Be warned: It's a stay-up-all-night kind of book. Compulsively readable.Pub Date: July 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-285531-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
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