A grim, uncompromising story of corrupted media and violent revenge.
In this thriller, a serious British journalist crosses into the world of tabloids, where he keeps company with greedy killers, drug lords, and terrorists.
In 2003, reporter Mike Delano is covering the conflict in Iraq when he’s captured, resulting in a two-year stretch as a captive to Islamic jihadis. After he escapes, he transforms this grueling ordeal into a bestselling book, which catches the attention of media tycoon Lord Max Rothenberg; he hopes that Mike can turn his slumping Sunday tabloid around as its editor. It’s not the hard-hitting journalism to which Mike is accustomed, but the pay and benefits are too good to pass up. Soon, he meets Rothenberg’s married daughter, Rachel Mizrahi, and the two quickly fall for each other; however, they’re unable to keep their affair a secret from her father. After Rothenberg dumps him and publicly sullies his reputation, Mike launches his own tabloid empire, Celeb Scoops International, and decides to get revenge on Rothenberg’s Hollywood production company. That’s the same idea that union leader Quinton Werner has; he survived a murder attempt that Rothenberg arranged as payback for delaying a big-budget action movie. As Mike digs for dirt on said film’s star, Werner teams up with terrorists and plots a couple of lethal strikes. This results in blackmail, double-crossings, and brutal murders. Eventually, drug lords enter the mix, and Rachel, stuck between her loyalty to family and the man she loves, finds herself caught in the crossfire.
Over the course of this novel, Brenna presents a story that’s full of flawed characters. Some are outright villains who have no qualms about committing vicious crimes, including Rothenberg, who even treats family members as disposable. Mike does some shady deeds, but he’s often morally conflicted and aware that his journalistic integrity is waning. The author deftly introduces an array of dubious players without ever making the cast feel overcrowded. He also provides a well-paced narrative with surprising deaths that push the story in new directions. The ever changing locales, which include London, Los Angeles, Beirut, and Rothenberg’s own private island, keep things lively. However, the women in this story feel underdeveloped; Rachel, though prominently featured, is little more than a source of conflict between Mike and Rothenberg, and it seems that whomever she sides with always has the upper hand. Readers likely won’t expect a homicide-laden tale such as this to be especially light, but the killings and torture scenes in this novel are particularly brutal, involving sharp-toothed animals and a sword that allows its wielder to effortlessly slice off others’ body parts. Still, action fans will note that Brenna always infuses the story with action, even when fists or guns aren’t involved: “The psychological blows had hit in deadly rat-a-tat-tat succession. Mentally, he was staggering like a battered boxer, reeling and about to hit the canvas.” This tale winds down to a satisfying resolution that perfectly suits a cast of men who allow retribution to rule them.
A grim, uncompromising story of corrupted media and violent revenge.Pub Date: May 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-9852109-1-5
Page Count: 380
Publisher: Pacific Press International
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
© Copyright 2025 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.
