Knox begins with an interesting premise, which he first attacks with enthusiasm; unfortunately, he drags the story out well...
Another thriller about the Knights Templar results in a disappointing and amateurish effort to emulate a best-selling novel.
It’s a hair-whipping race to figure out who the bad guys are and what they’re really after in Knox’s (The Lost Goddess, 2012, etc.) latest offering. Anthropologist Jessica Silverton is a member of an archaeological team in Peru studying the Moche, a pre-Columbian civilization. She’s convinced the murals and other artifacts depicting violence, carnage and erotic activities actually occurred, but she wants to discover the underlying cause and is skeptical when her boss (and lover) believes the behavior was probably caused by el Niño. Across the ocean, investigative reporter Adam Blackwood watches in horror as noted historian Archibald McLintock ends his life in a fiery car crash outside Rosslyn Chapel, a Scottish tourist attraction associated with the Knights Templar and popularized by Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. But McLintock’s daughter, Nina, refuses to believe her father committed suicide and convinces Adam to help her uncover the truth. Armed with a bag of her father’s old receipts, the two track his last movements among Templar sites in Western Europe, where they discover one of her father’s secrets. Meanwhile, Detective Mark Ibsen is tasked with investigating a series of gruesome autoerotic deaths in London, and what he uncovers is pretty far-fetched. He crosses paths with Adam and Nina after a horrific attack, and they share what they know. Told in short cliffhanging chapters, the story becomes more convoluted with each chapter as the author adds layer upon ridiculous layer to the mix. The characters experience repeated flashbacks about their lives; countless feelings of ominous foreboding; lots of menacing looks from tattoo-sporting men associated with drug cartels; liberal doses of gory murders; and endless encyclopedic information to explain every supposition or twist. When the heroes finally assemble for a boat trip on the Amazon (except for Ibsen, who wisely chooses to participate by phone) to put together the final piece of the puzzle, don't get too excited: The trip takes forever.
Knox begins with an interesting premise, which he first attacks with enthusiasm; unfortunately, he drags the story out well beyond tolerable limits and literally stomps it to death.Pub Date: May 7, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-670-02664-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2013
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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