by William Bayer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 5, 2002
Bayer (Mirror Maze, 1994, etc.) turns the case into something ambitious and penetrating, but also overlong, overwrought, and...
Bayer returns from his pseudonymous sabbatical as David Hunt (The Magician’s Tale, 1997, etc.) to spin a dizzyingly complex tale of long-unsolved felony.
Forensic sketch artist David Weiss thinks he’s come home to the mythical midwestern city of Calista to draw pictures of the leading personalities in a closed-to-cameras murder case and fall into bed with eager CNN reporter Pam Wells. Actually, as he swiftly realizes, he’s avid to return to an unsolved mystery that’s obsessed him since childhood: the kidnapping 26 years ago of little Belle Fulraine, whose complicit au pair was found beheaded soon afterward, and the brutal shotgun murders the following year, after Belle’s dazed parents divorced, of Barbara Fulraine and her latest lover, corn-fed high-school French teacher Tom Jessup. David has good reason to be entranced by the case: Belle’s brothers, Mark and Robin, were schoolmates of his; Jessup was his teacher; and Barbara was one of the last patients his psychiatrist father, Dr. Thomas Rubin, treated before his own suicide a few months later. Although Barbara had feared the jealousy of another lover, mobbed-up club owner Jack Cody, the police had never made an arrest in the case, and in the quarter-century since, most of the leads, from Cody to legendary gossip columnist Waldo Channing to Barbara’s ex-husband Andrew Fulraine, have passed on. But its tormented personalities still live in the diary Barbara kept until the day of her death and the extensive case notes David’s father kept on his seductive, enigmatic patient—and especially on her recurring dream of being pursued by a mounted posse that invariably ends when their horses, and her own, break into pieces.
Bayer (Mirror Maze, 1994, etc.) turns the case into something ambitious and penetrating, but also overlong, overwrought, and overlaid with borrowings from sources as different as Vera Caspary’s classic noir Laura and Freud’s classic case study of the Wolf Man.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2002
ISBN: 0-7434-0336-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2001
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by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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New York Times Bestseller
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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by Lisa Jewell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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