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THEIR FEET RUN TO EVIL

A BIG RAY ELMORE NOVEL

A thrilling Southern whodunit anchored by a grizzled, whip-smart main character.

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A placid Arkansas delta town is rocked by a child’s grisly murder in this series mystery set in the late 1950s.

Holland’s latest novel finds White military veteran–turned–police chief Big Ray Elmore on high alert after the body of Esther Alice King, a young Black girl, is discovered floating facedown in the local river with blunt-force head trauma. The chief, who’s still tormented by symptoms of PTSD from his war experience, isn’t used to such horrific crime in his small town, but he’s quick to begin his investigation with fellow officer Curtis Jim LaBelle, questioning locals who last encountered Esther, a girl who was just a bit older than his own sons. Holland’s enthralling mystery quickly springs into action with plenty of dramatic developments and plot twists. The racist town sheriff, Cecil Cooper, and the county coroner drag their feet on the investigation, and Elmore suspects that abrasive local Carl Trimble and others in a racist “nocturnal organization” may be involved. Short, clipped chapters keep the pages turning as Elmore digs deeper into the town’s history of bigotry; meanwhile, his married life becomes messy as his feelings for Carl’s abused wife, Grace, a former flame, get more complicated. Add in a lengthy drought and a “rainmaker” who has more dirt on the local townsfolk than anyone else, and the result is a mystery with brio to spare. The dialogue is rife with old Southern vernacular and derogatory innuendo that suit the time and place, and although the book is a bit overlong, it’s a solid addition to Holland’s impressive oeuvre, which also includes a forensic mystery/thriller series starring Dr. Kel McKelvey. The author’s characterization and plotting are on-point as he draws on his expertise as a forensic scientific director with the Department of Defense to keep the details accurate.

A thrilling Southern whodunit anchored by a grizzled, whip-smart main character.

Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020

ISBN: 979-8-68-775623-5

Page Count: 421

Publisher: Self

Review Posted Online: June 8, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021

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DEVOLUTION

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

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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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THE WOMEN

A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.

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A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.

When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.

A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.

Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024

ISBN: 9781250178633

Page Count: 480

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023

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