A fast-paced, action-packed tale involving murder, espionage, and a secret missile.
A thriller features various government agencies, spies, terrorists, and assassins—the whole shebang.
The story opens with the assassination of Nick Butler, a high-ranking executive with Century Aerospace, a defense contractor working on the top-secret Ghost Missile. Who would want Butler dead? Well, that would be Lillian Brewster, director of special projects at Century, who, with her brother, Alec, is trying to pass the plans for the Ghost Missile to the Russians. Sensing that Butler was beginning to have suspicions about her, she asked her Russian contacts to kill him, and they were happy to oblige. Of course, this is discovered piecemeal, as the CIA (and a special department called the National Clandestine Service), the FBI, and other high-powered agencies get into the act, needing not only to solve Butler’s murder, but also to safeguard the plans for the missile, a weapon that will drastically change modern warfare. The Russians must not get their villainous hands on it. A creative disinformation maneuver gives the heroes a bit more time, but this is a nail-biter to the finale. And it does end with a bang. Several of them, in fact. Truitt (Spy Brothers, 2016, etc.) spent a career with Northrop Grumman, the well-known defense contractor, which gives him certain bona fides. The author moves things along quickly and with a real feeling of immediacy. There are several assassination episodes, like plums in a pudding. But there are also a few plot problems, including a pointless plot detail early on about there being no dust on Vinalhaven Island. (Really?) And one assassin gets the drop on his victim by offering to do his yard work, gratis. The dialogue is stiff, scripted: “Nothing can be allowed to damage anything of importance in that magnificent city,” the FBI director says of Florence. Even uptight and upright government agents don’t talk like this. Still, the target audience will likely enjoy this propulsive yarn, undeterred by these quibbles.
A fast-paced, action-packed tale involving murder, espionage, and a secret missile.Pub Date: May 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5462-3792-1
Page Count: 230
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2019
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
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
© 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.
