A formidable contender in the religious-thriller genre.
When a professor of folklore and his student are murdered, a Philadelphia detective is on the case.
Detective John McDonough plays a cat-and-mouse game to find who killed Professor Richard Dunglison and his student Ted Hallman. At the crime scene, the word “Hamlet” is written in blood, and Hallman mumbles “Poor Yorick,” to Dunglison’s severed head just before dying. Prior to Hallman’s death, he was working feverishly on a paper that would reveal the whereabouts of an ancient lost text. McDonough realizes that Hallman’s knowledge is what got him killed and his teacher dismembered. The detective finds Hallman’s notes inside a copy of Hamlet at Hallman’s apartment. In the course of 24 hours—a highly unfeasible time frame for all that ensues—McDonough is immersed in the world of academe: cryptic clues that involve church history, witchcraft, a kidnapping and the missing ancient book that purportedly imparts secret powers. His investigation uncovers that a crooked cop is divulging information to those willing to kill for the book, and although the dirty one stands out among the suspects, Ohl does throw in a few surprising twists. The detective doesn’t know whom to trust as he deciphers the mystery surrounding a sect that broke from the church centuries ago and will stop at nothing to retrieve the lost tome. Amid the intricately plotted, Da Vinci Code-style story, a flirtatious dance develops between the detective and Amy Ritter, Dunglison’s student on whom McDonough relies for historical knowledge surrounding the mysterious Brethren of Roxborough, a local religious group that may hold the answer to the murders. A dizzying assemblage of clues, including a centuries-old letter, a lieutenant’s death and the appearance of an enigmatic woman named Sophia Mezzalura, pervade the first third of the story and lead McDonough and Ritter to an exhumation, where the pace finally accommodates the unraveling of the puzzle. Although some questions remain, such as what power the book purportedly bestows, Ohl delivers on many accounts, including a well-crafted cast, short, snappy chapters that move the action along and a touch of mystery at the end, which lends itself to a sequel. Ohl’s ambitious attempt at this debut novel bodes well for the next installment.
A formidable contender in the religious-thriller genre.Pub Date: June 29, 2012
ISBN: 978-1477681268
Page Count: 276
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Loyal King stans may disagree, but this is a snooze.
A much-beloved author gives a favorite recurring character her own novel.
Holly Gibney made her first appearance in print with a small role in Mr. Mercedes (2014). She played a larger role in The Outsider (2018). And she was the central character in If It Bleeds, a novella in the 2020 collection of the same name. King has said that the character “stole his heart.” Readers adore her, too. One way to look at this book is as several hundred pages of fan service. King offers a lot of callbacks to these earlier works that are undoubtedly a treat for his most loyal devotees. That these easter eggs are meaningless and even befuddling to new readers might make sense in terms of costs and benefits. King isn’t exactly an author desperate to grow his audience; pleasing the people who keep him at the top of the bestseller lists is probably a smart strategy, and this writer achieved the kind of status that whatever he writes is going to be published. Having said all that, it’s possible that even his hardcore fans might find this story a bit slow. There are also issues in terms of style. Much of the language King uses and the cultural references he drops feel a bit creaky. The word slacks occurs with distracting frequency. King uses the phrase keeping it on the down-low in a way that suggests he probably doesn’t understand how this phrase is currently used—and has been used for quite a while. But the biggest problem is that this narrative is framed as a mystery without delivering the pleasures of a mystery. The reader knows who the bad guys are from the start. This can be an effective storytelling device, but in this case, waiting for the private investigator heroine to get to where the reader is at the beginning of the story feels interminable.
Loyal King stans may disagree, but this is a snooze.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781668016138
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
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
© Copyright 2023 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
