High-energy action makes this a mostly enjoyable thriller.
Guns blaze in Syria as Mitch Rapp once again takes it to the bad guys.
A few things you need to know about the series hero: He is a highly proficient killer, he’s absolutely loyal to the U.S., and he has a strong sense of honor. So when Damian Losa, a billionaire Mexican and “the most powerful criminal in the world,” calls him for a favor, Rapp can’t refuse. “I helped him when he desperately needed it,” Losa says, “and he’s the kind of man who’ll feel obligated to honor that debt.” “Until I’ve repaid my debt to him,” Rapp says, “he’s the boss.” Losa wants to know about the growing Captagon business in Western Europe, where the illicit drug causes irreversible brain damage and permanent psychosis in its users. Losa asks Rapp to find out how the Syrians are making huge quantities of the drug economically. Jihadis want to undermine the West “where they were weak” by effectively rotting people’s brains, because they can never win on a battlefield. Rapp goes to Syria disguised as a wealthy Canadian attorney and learns that the Russians are in charge of exporting the drug to the West. (Turns out the Russkies hate us, too. Who knew?) Of course, Rapp gets into some bloody gunfights because that's what he does. But at least once the violence is disgusting; when a young man is impaled on an angle iron and is obviously going to die, Rapp bashes him in the forehead. “You see?” he tells the boy's father. “It’s okay. He’s with God now.” Shame on Rapp. Although most of the action takes place in Syria, the interesting put-downs are about the Russians. A Russian general muses, “Russia had been revealed for what it was: a starving old woman lashed by the Siberian wind.” And Rapp observes, “The Russians aren’t people who play to win. They play to make everyone else lose.”
High-energy action makes this a mostly enjoyable thriller.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982164997
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Emily Bestler/Atria
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2023
A particularly nasty villain heightens the stakes in this thriller about a woman learning how to be her own hero.
An author is targeted by a fan who just can’t let her go.
Arden Bowie has had plenty of tragedy in her life, but now she’s finally on top. After her parents died when she was a teenager, she moved from Brooklyn to Ohio to live with her aunt, uncle, and cousins. She soon became part of their loving family and grew up to become a writer and bookseller. When her debut novel is published, she meets Dustin Dubecki at her first event. He showers her with praise, asks for writing advice, and wants to take her out for coffee. Arden tells herself he’s just a little awkward, but then he keeps showing up at her local events—and, even stranger, she’s sure she sees him lurking at her event in New York City. When he bursts into her apartment one night and assaults her, Arden’s calm life is shattered. Dustin gets a five-year sentence at a psychiatric facility; Arden spends most of that time rebuilding her sense of stability. Eventually, she moves to Oregon to start a new life where Dustin can never find her. But even though she has a beautiful home, a thriving career, a doting family, new friends, and even a potential love interest in a former cop named Gideon Riley, Arden can’t escape Dustin’s rage when his sentence is finally up. Roberts toggles between Arden’s point of view and Dustin’s, giving the reader occasional glimpses into his extremely twisted mindset. Although Arden’s attempts to escape Dustin are engrossing, the story stalls in the middle when far too many pages are dedicated to Arden purchasing and decorating a house. But the excitement picks back up when Dustin, a truly odious villain, re-enters the story. It’s also satisfying to see Arden grow into someone who refuses to be a victim, even as she deals with horrifying circumstances.
A particularly nasty villain heightens the stakes in this thriller about a woman learning how to be her own hero.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781250413581
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
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 2026 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.
