A finely paced crime thriller that should appeal to new and established fans of the series.
The brutal murder of a waitress leads a Long Island detective to the most complicated case of his career in this sixth installment of a series.
Detective Neil Jericho of the East Hampton Police Department is visiting his daughter, Katie, when he receives a call from his supervisor, Chief Krauss. A waitress was found murdered and Krauss wants Jericho to investigate. The victim is identified as 21-year-old Sally Espinosa Baez and an examination of her body reveals that she is a transsexual. Jericho turns to dispatcher Evangeline “Vangie” Clark for help. Vangie and her wife, Ingrid, attend meetings of the Hamptons LGBTQ Center and she can assist with the nuances of the case. The search for Baez’s next of kin leads Jericho to Phyllis Sonnenschein, an LGBTQ activist and candidate for town supervisor of East Hampton. Sonnenschein opened her home to Baez and she believes the killing is a hate crime. Evidence gathered at the homicide scene points in that direction. Meanwhile, Jericho’s girlfriend, tattoo artist Rainbow, and her business are targeted by a member of a hate group. As both cases intensify, Jericho discovers surprising secrets in Baez’s past that may hold the key to her murder. The latest installment of Marks’ (Amazing Detective, 2017, etc.) series starring Jericho deepens the development of the central characters while featuring a complex murder mystery full of surprising twists and turns. The narrative is anchored by Jericho, a dedicated detective with an unerring sense of justice. His devotion to his job cost him his marriage and he is determined not to make the same mistakes in his relationship with Rainbow. The supporting characters are equally well-developed, particularly Vangie, a 911 dispatcher who aspires to move up within the department. The investigation into the murder of Baez unfolds methodically as Jericho uncovers the tragic circumstances of her past and the mystery surrounding her death. That said, the editing is inconsistent in spots. For example, medical examiner John Alvarez is referred to as “Alvarez” and “Alvares.”
A finely paced crime thriller that should appeal to new and established fans of the series.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2018
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 259
Publisher: Top Tier Lit
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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