An often entertaining series entry with several new and engaging characters.
Enigmatic programmer Vortmit returns in this second entry in Lytes’ thriller series, involving a drug dealer, a tech millionaire, and a pill-popping lawyer on the South Carolina coast.
After causing a car collision, real estate attorney Gretchen Donovan fakes her death rather than face a disciplinary board for embezzlement, jury tampering, bribery, and other misdeeds. Then a stranger approaches her, thinking she’s someone else, and asks, “Are you still okay to do the drop?” She receives a bag and a briefcase, but she’s unaware that they belong to drug-dealing criminal Garrison Buchan, who’s infuriated when the real pickup guy, Oscar, ends up empty-handed. Meanwhile, Gretchen’s estranged sister, Rainey, hopes to reconnect with her sibling. Vortmit wants Rainey’s popular, million-dollar app, Gotcha—specifically, its “GPS linked proprietary DNA identification software.” After Gretchen’s pill-induced fog wears off, she injects one of the syringes she finds inside the briefcase, which contain an unknown white substance. The cops already have eyes on Oscar, as they know that he’s working for a drug dealer. Adding to the chaos is Vortmit, who tries to take down Garrison on his own to “exact justice that society couldn’t”—and temporarily silence his own mysterious, violence-filled dreams. Vortmit, the star of the previous series installment, appears only sporadically here and has little bearing on the plot. Still, the other players are appealingly vibrant, including sympathetic Oscar, an eccentric psychic named Lenny, and Gretchen, who undergoes a transformation of sorts after repeated injections of the mysterious substance. Despite the large cast, Lytes provides a mostly easy-to-follow plot that’s frequently witty; at one point, for example, the third-person narration defines a breakup as a “sudden yank at the ejection seat of their relationship.” Some aspects are confusing, though, such as Vortmit’s murky backstory and the appearances of Raoul and Jose, who headline their own chapter before promptly vanishing from the novel.
An often entertaining series entry with several new and engaging characters.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 377
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Red-hot storytelling.
Two master storytellers create one explosive thriller.
Mauna Loa is going to blow within days—“the biggest damn eruption in a century”—and John “Mac” MacGregor of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory leads a team trying to fend off catastrophe. Can they vent the volcano? Divert the flow of blistering hot lava? The city of Hilo is but a few miles down the hill from the world’s largest active volcano and will likely be in the path of a 15-foot-high wall of molten menace racing toward them at 50 miles an hour. “You live here, you always worry about the big one,” Mac says, and this could be it. There’s much more, though. The U.S. Army swoops in, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff personally “drafts” Mac into the Army. Then Mac learns the frightening secret of the Army’s special interest in Mauna Loa, and suddenly the stakes fly far, far beyond Hilo. Perhaps they can save the world, but the odds don’t look good. Readers will sympathize with Mac, who teaches surfing to troubled teens and for whom “taking chances is part of his damned genetic code.” But no one takes chances like the aerial cowboy Jake Rogers and the photographer who hires him to fly over the smoldering, burbling, rock-spitting hellhole. Some of the action scenes will make readers’ eyes pop as the tension continues to build. As with any good thriller, there’s a body count, but not all thrillers have blackened corpses surfing lava flows. The story is the brainchild of the late Crichton, who did a great deal of research but died in 2008 before he could finish the novel. His widow handed the project to James Patterson, who weaves Crichton’s work into a seamless summer read.
Red-hot storytelling.Pub Date: June 3, 2024
ISBN: 9780316565073
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
Fine Grisham storytelling that his fans will enjoy.
A descendant of enslaved people fights a Florida developer over the future of a small island.
In 1760, the slave ship Venus breaks apart in a storm on its way to Savannah, and only a few survivors, all Africans, find their way safely to a tiny barrier island between Florida and Georgia. For two centuries, only formerly enslaved people and their descendants live there. A curse on white people hangs over the island, and none who ever set foot on it survive. Its last resident was Lovely Jackson, who departed as a teen in 1955. Today—well, in 2020—a developer called Tidal Breeze wants Florida’s permission to “develop” Dark Isle, which sits within bridge-building distance from the well-established Camino Island. The plot is an easy setup for Grisham, big people vs. little people. Lovely’s revered ancestors are buried on Dark Isle, which Hurricane Leo devastated from end to end. Lovely claims the islet’s ownership despite not having formal title, and she wants white folks to leave the place alone. But apparently Florida doesn’t have enough casinos and golf courses to suit some people. Surely developers can buy off that little old Black lady with a half million bucks. No? How about a million? “I wish they’d stop offering money,” Lovely complains. “I ain’t for sale.” Thus a non-jury court trial begins to establish ownership. The story has no legal fireworks, just ordinary maneuvering. The real fun is in the backstory, in the portrayal of the aptly named Lovely, and the skittishness of white people to step on the island as long as the ancient curse remains. Lovely has self-published a history of the island, and a sympathetic white woman named Mercer Mann decides to write a nonfiction account as well. When that book ultimately comes out, reviewers for Kirkus (and others) “raved on and on.” Don’t expect stunning twists, though early on Dark Isle gives four white guys a stark message. The tension ends with the judge’s verdict, but the remaining 30 pages bring the story to a satisfying conclusion.
Fine Grisham storytelling that his fans will enjoy.Pub Date: May 28, 2024
ISBN: 9780385545990
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
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