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LETHAL AGENT

Mills does a great job carrying on Vince Flynn’s legacy; fans won’t be disappointed.

This latest offering from the late Flynn by way of Mills (Red War, 2018, etc.) shows that as long as bad guys run amok or crazy women run for president, America will need Mitch Rapp.

The terrorist Mullah Sayid Halabi barely survives an attack by Mitch Rapp, who is ex–CIA and a private contractor and the bane of all who hate America. Then Halabi concocts an attack he believes no one would ever anticipate: to weaponize anthrax, slip it through the Mexican border, and target politicians who support Middle East intervention. He will follow up with a new disease called YARS that will kill Westerners by the tens of millions and spark “a pandemic that would fundamentally change human existence for generations.” Why he doesn’t skip the anthrax and go straight to YARS is unclear. One person Halabi doesn’t want to hurt is the godless Sen. Christine Barnett, the probable successor to President Josh Alexander. Americans don’t care about God, health care, or the environment, she muses privately. They just want “to hurt the people they hate.” As president, she will “get the hell out of the Middle East” (leaving poor Rapp without much killing to do). Meanwhile, Halabi “relished the thought” of Barnett exploiting his attacks for political gain. She’s too useful to attack because he knows she’s a traitor to America. Their biggest obstacle is Rapp, the killing machine. “There were white hats and there were black hats,” Rapp muses. “When you killed all the people in the black hats, the job was done.” It’s too bad the contrasts are so stark, especially with liberal Barnett being an irredeemable nut job. Author Mills is a terrific storyteller, of that there is no doubt. But it’s so damn easy to read “white hats” as “MAGA hats,” and implying that half the country is unpatriotic gets old after a while.

Mills does a great job carrying on Vince Flynn’s legacy; fans won’t be disappointed.

Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-5011-9062-9

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Emily Bestler/Atria

Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019

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DEVOLUTION

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

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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

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THE SILENT PATIENT

Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.

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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

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