Persistently riveting; should pique interest in the series’ follow-up—and the preceding 10.
In Neal’s (Bone Hook, 2015, etc.) latest thriller, Hawaiian cop Sgt. Lei Texeira returns to find the killer of a child, while her husband, Lt. Michael Stevens, struggles to escape captivity in Central America.
Lei’s the type of woman who’d go alone to save her husband when she learns probable terrorists kidnapped Michael during his overseas stint training military troops. But Capt. Cherry Joy Omura can’t spare Lei, opting to immerse her in a case—a child’s skull washing ashore in Hana. Simply trying to locate where a local woman discovered the skull, however, quickly intensifies Lei’s investigation. She stumbles onto a marijuana farm, where a man uses children for slave labor and ensures they’re armed and willing to kill. Michael, meanwhile, is imprisoned in a pit with several others working for Security Solutions. The captors separate Michael when he gets sick, and he discovers their plans: if the company doesn’t pay a ransom soon, they’ll start killing the abductees. He manages to escape and free fellow contractors, but now the group must brave a largely unfamiliar jungle with the hopes of making it safely to Nicaragua. While Michael and the rest face crocodiles and venomous snakes, Lei dodges bullets and hunts a dangerous man who may have murdered a child. There’s not much mystery in the novel—Lei’s investigation essentially unravels on its own—but plenty of action and suspense. Neal’s writing is tenacious, highlighted by her masterly crosscutting of two exhilarating scenes: Michael’s group running through the Honduran forest and Lei fleeing armed men in the Maui jungle. Dramatic repercussions are equally solid, including Lei being upset that Michael told her his deployment date only the day before he left. Neal knows how to tease her previous novels with panache, like “that other trip,” Lei’s personal mission targeting an enemy on the Big Island, resulting in an apparently less than cheery outcome. The story finally reveals the kidnappers’ identities in the midst of a twist ending. It’s an unquestionably startling turn, but while Neal keeps it sensible, the climax isn’t as strong as its lead-up and will likely disappoint some readers.
Persistently riveting; should pique interest in the series’ follow-up—and the preceding 10.Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9967066-6-7
Page Count: 276
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 11, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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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