A whirlwind debut, packed with excitement, espionage, and an increasingly dangerous main character who never lets up.
The evolution of a restless serviceman-turned-contract-killer takes some unexpected twists and turns in this debut thriller.
Anatomy professor Schiele’s vigorous debut novel follows David Diegert, a part-Caucasian, part-Native American 20-something Minnesotan frustrated with his dead-end mini-mart job and being stuck in his parents’ abusive home. A layoff motivates Diegert to take control of his own future by enlisting in the U.S. Army and he’s soon deployed to Afghanistan. Immediately upon arrival, he’s thrust into a covert heroin-smuggling operation; his short-temperedness abruptly ends his military career but also toughens his determination. A stint as a bar bouncer further solidifies his brassy personality, which gets noticed by the Russian gang members running the place; they quickly recruit him for special, violent assignments. The gig is lucrative enough to alleviate his financial woes, but it also becomes a gateway into a big-league criminal career as a hired assassin. From here, Schiele’s tour de force fully embraces its central character’s almost primordial transformation into a relentless killing-machine-for-hire—who also has a soft spot for beautiful women. The James Bond-like portrayal of Diegert is thrilling as he becomes an increasingly deadly force, carrying out intricate and lethal assignments from Austin, Texas, to Paris to Somalia to Greece; later, he gets involved in a hostage rescue mission in Romania. Diegert’s hubris becomes his undoing, though, when he becomes enmeshed in the corporate-espionage intrigue. This novel’s protagonist is a brazen hit man who becomes more murderous with each assignment, and as a result, the story is undeniably fast-paced and gripping. Readers may or may not root for Diegert as he becomes more threatening and volatile, but he’s inarguably a force to be reckoned with—Schiele empowers his daredevil character with unbridled physical agility—and his character acts as a solid anchor for the plot, up to its shocking conclusion.
A whirlwind debut, packed with excitement, espionage, and an increasingly dangerous main character who never lets up.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-942645-43-6
Page Count: 564
Publisher: Inkshares
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that...
Twenty-four years after a traumatic disappearance tore a Georgia family apart, Slaughter’s scorching stand-alone picks them up and shreds them all over again.
The Carrolls have never been the same since 19-year-old Julia vanished. After years of fruitlessly pestering the police, her veterinarian father, Sam, killed himself; her librarian mother, Helen, still keeps the girl's bedroom untouched, just in case. Julia’s sisters have been equally scarred. Lydia Delgado has sold herself for drugs countless times, though she’s been clean for years now; Claire Scott has just been paroled after knee-capping her tennis partner for a thoughtless remark. The evening that Claire’s ankle bracelet comes off, her architect husband, Paul, is callously murdered before her eyes and, without a moment's letup, she stumbles on a mountainous cache of snuff porn. Paul’s business partner, Adam Quinn, demands information from Claire and threatens her with dire consequences if she doesn’t deliver. The Dunwoody police prove as ineffectual as ever. FBI agent Fred Nolan is more suavely menacing than helpful. So Lydia and Claire, who’ve grown so far apart that they’re virtual strangers, are unwillingly thrown back on each other for help. Once she’s plunged you into this maelstrom, Slaughter shreds your own nerves along with those of the sisters, not simply by a parade of gruesome revelations—though she supplies them in abundance—but by peeling back layer after layer from beloved family members Claire and Lydia thought they knew. The results are harrowing.
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that she makes most of her high-wire competition look pallid, formulaic, or just plain fake.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-242905-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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