A substantial thriller further improved by its female leads.
A housewife joins a covert agency out to thwart a terrorist faction in the James’ debut action thriller.
Stay-at-home mom Tessa Scott, hoping for some relaxation while her husband, Robert, and their kids are away, is thrust into a new world when a Libyan terrorist comes looking for a bomb he believes is in her house. Capt. Chase Hunter of the Enigma Agency comes to her aid, and the bright, resourceful woman proves to be an asset to the team as it tries to prevent terrorists from stealing isotopes—elements for, among other purposes, diagnosing diseases. James’ novel, which boasts a resilient protagonist suddenly finding herself in far-fetched situations, sharply fuses humor and sincerity: Watching Tessa continually flee seemingly untrustworthy agents is funny, but her physical revulsion to murder is a reminder of her quotidian home life. Gunfights, hostage situations and even a forest fire propel the action, but the novel’s characters are its best feature. Relationships, for one, play more like soap opera than thriller: Enigma agent Samantha flirts with computer tech Vernon, but she seems envious of Tessa’s connection to Chase. Agent Carter has his eyes on all women, and all the men seem drawn to Tessa. The novel’s dramatic conflict is enhanced by Tessa’s uncertainty as to whom she can trust. The males, frankly, don’t stand a chance against the females: Sam, whose interrogations involve a gun and who repeatedly refers to the housewife protagonist as “Betty Crocker”; Honey Lynch, a beautiful and potentially lethal woman; and Claudia, the socially inept, mildly autistic Enigma librarian. Some of Tessa’s predicament stems from credulity-straining coincidence—she’s one of only a few who know the location of a vault where hostages are being held—but this is at least acknowledged by Tessa as “divine intervention,” which she genuinely believes.
A substantial thriller further improved by its female leads.Pub Date: March 4, 2013
ISBN: 978-1480276031
Page Count: 334
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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