No real thematic punch but a fast, furious, and genuinely fun read.
The latest novel by acclaimed Cuban writer Yoss is a quirky blend of science fiction and hard-boiled mystery that follows a robotic police officer as he attempts to catch an infamous criminal—and save humankind in the process.
A thinly veiled homage to Raymond Chandler, the novel’s main character is a humanoid robot named Raymond, after his favorite writer, whose main character he emulates by wearing a trench coat and broad-brimmed hat. A police officer working on the William S. Burroughs trading station—which orbits around Titan and is the only station in the solar system where humans can make intergalactic deals with aliens—Raymond finds his mundane existence turned upside down when a wanted alien escapes his bounty-hunter captors while on the station. The criminal, Makrow 34, has unparalleled psionic powers and kills another alien while fleeing. Raymond’s bosses—the Galactic Trade Confederation—want the potentially volatile situation resolved as quickly as possible and tell the positronic police officer to apprehend Makrow 34 before he leaves the system. After asking himself “What Philip Marlowe would do,” Raymond enlists the help of a human with similar psionic abilities who's currently imprisoned on the station, and together the unlikely duo set out on a highly dangerous escapade. The trench coat–wearing robotic detective makes for an appealing and at times comedic protagonist, and Yoss’ clear and focused writing style keeps the reader turning pages throughout. But while the worldbuilding is exceptional in some parts (an independently owned space station held together by superglue and staples, for example), the characters never rise above two-dimensionality. The narrative, however, is action-packed—literally jumping from one adventure to another—and the conclusion’s highly satisfying.
No real thematic punch but a fast, furious, and genuinely fun read.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63206-246-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Restless Books
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Lots of adrenaline-driven action, a departure from Ware’s usual wire-taut mysteries.
When a security expert is murdered, his wife will stop at nothing to find the killer—even as she becomes suspect No. 1.
Jacintha “Jack” Cross is a “penetration tester”: She’s the boots-on-the-ground person for testing out security systems, while her husband, Gabe, does the same for cybersecurity. Leaving a job one night, Jack is picked up by the police—an occupational hazard—and when she returns home, she finds Gabe’s body, throat slit. In shock, Jack reports the murder, talks to the police again, and goes to stay with her older sister, Helena Wick, for a day. When she’s asked to return to the station for a few more questions, Jack quickly realizes that she’s under suspicion—and so she goes on the run. With the help of her sister and Cole Garrick, Gabe’s oldest friend, she’s able to elude capture and begin her own investigation, determined to find her husband’s killer. Apparently, Gabe had found a “zero-day exploit,” a backdoor vulnerability, in a popular app, one that could be worth a lot of money to governments and bad actors. Ware has often highlighted technology as a malignant, uncontrollable force in her novels, and it’s frequently at odds with her luxurious, somewhat timeless settings. But in this novel, tech is front and center. Despite the contemporary trappings, though, the story is still a familiar one: It's The Fugitive if the main characters were women. There's plenty of excitement—chases, break-ins, shady bitcoin deals, an impending medical emergency—but the pool of characters is too small to leave much suspense about the mystery of Gabe’s death. Jack is a strong and fearless heroine, and Ware is always a master of setting and atmosphere, but the great reveal makes one wonder: Was it all worth it? Or more accurately, couldn’t Jack have figured this out much faster? Did it all have to come down to the poetic moment when she has nothing left?
Lots of adrenaline-driven action, a departure from Ware’s usual wire-taut mysteries.Pub Date: June 20, 2023
ISBN: 9781982155292
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scout Press/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
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