A moody and multifaceted psychological thriller.
Questions, and plenty of secrets, still linger seven years after the murder of 11-year-old Oh Seryong kicked off a series of events that destroyed the lives of so many.
In 2004, Choi Hyonsu, who was head of security at Seryong Dam, was convicted of killing Seryong; Seryong's father, who owned much of the property around the dam; and his own wife, then opening the dam’s floodgates, destroying nearly the entire Seryong Village. The scandal followed Hyonsu's 11-year-old son, Sowon, as he was passed around to numerous family members. Eventually, Mr. Ahn, a security guard who worked for Hyonsu at the dam, takes Sowon in. Now, the two make a living diving for clams in the waters surrounding the island where they live in tiny Lighthouse Village. Their quiet existence is shattered when they help retrieve a group of people missing after a diving accident and Sowon’s past is exposed. Sowan then receives a manuscript written by Mr. Ahn, detailing the events of 2004, and he begins to wonder if his father is actually guilty of the crimes that led to his incarceration on Seoul Prison’s death row. Bestselling Korean author Jeong sprinkles Sowon's narration and excerpts of Mr. Ahn's manuscript throughout, and eerie interludes, such as a night dive by Mr. Ahn that reveals the largely intact underwater village that was previously flooded to create the dam, add a sense of dreamlike beauty. Each character’s motivations are examined, such as Sowon’s bond with his troubled, hard-drinking father and Seryong's treatment by her cruel father, the details of which are rendered even more potent by the author's frank descriptions. Missing and dead girls are a prolific staple of crime fiction, but Jeong’s portrait of Seryong, a young girl unforgivably betrayed by the very people whose job it was to keep her safe, saves her from being just one of many. Readers will think they know what actually happened to Seryong long before Sowon does, but they should be prepared for a few final twists.
A moody and multifaceted psychological thriller.Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-14-313424-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Too much drama at the end detracts from a finely wrought and subtle conundrum.
Ware (In A Dark, Dark Wood, 2015) offers up a classic “paranoid woman” story with a modern twist in this tense, claustrophobic mystery.
Days before departing on a luxury cruise for work, travel journalist Lo Blacklock is the victim of a break-in. Though unharmed, she ends up locked in her own room for several hours before escaping; as a result, she is unable to sleep. By the time she comes onboard the Aurora, Lo is suffering from severe sleep deprivation and possibly even PTSD, so when she hears a big splash from the cabin next door in the middle of the night, “the kind of splash made by a body hitting water,” she can’t prove to security that anything violent has actually occurred. To make matters stranger, there's no record of any passenger traveling in the cabin next to Lo’s, even though Lo herself saw a woman there and even borrowed makeup from her before the first night’s dinner party. Reeling from her own trauma, and faced with proof that she may have been hallucinating, Lo continues to investigate, aided by her ex-boyfriend Ben (who's also writing about the cruise), fighting desperately to find any shred of evidence that she may be right. The cast of characters, their conversations, and the luxurious but confining setting all echo classic Agatha Christie; in fact, the structure of the mystery itself is an old one: a woman insists murder has occurred, everyone else says she’s crazy. But Lo is no wallflower; she is a strong and determined modern heroine who refuses to doubt the evidence of her own instincts. Despite this successful formula, and a whole lot of slowly unraveling tension, the end is somehow unsatisfying. And the newspaper and social media inserts add little depth.
Too much drama at the end detracts from a finely wrought and subtle conundrum.Pub Date: July 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-3293-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scout Press/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.
Coulter’s treasured FBI agents take on two cases marked by danger and personal involvement.
Dillon Savitch and his wife, Lacey Sherlock, have special abilities that have served them well in law enforcement (Paradox, 2018, etc.). But that doesn't prevent Sherlock’s car from hitting a running man after having been struck by a speeding SUV that runs a red light. The runner, though clearly injured, continues on his way and disappears. Not so the SUV driver, a security engineer for the Bexholt Group, which has ties to government agencies. Sherlock’s own concussion causes memory loss so severe that she doesn’t recognize Savitch or remember their son, Sean. The whole incident seems more suspicious when a blood test from the splatter of the man Sherlock hit reveals that he’s Justice Cummings, an analyst for the CIA. The agency’s refusal to cooperate makes Savitch certain that Bexholt is involved in a deep-laid plot. Meanwhile, Special Agent Griffin Hammersmith is visiting friends who run a cafe in the touristy Virginia town of Gaffers Ridge. Hammersmith, who has psychic abilities, is taken aback when he hears in his mind a woman’s cry for help. Reporter Carson DeSilva, who came to the area to interview a Nobel Prize winner, also has psychic abilities, and she overhears the thoughts of Rafer Bodine, a young man who has apparently kidnapped and possibly murdered three teenage girls. Unluckily, she blurts out her thoughts, and she’s snatched and tied up in a cellar by Bodine. Bodine may be a killer, but he’s also the nephew of the sheriff and the son of the local bigwig. So the sheriff arrests Hammersmith and refuses to accept his FBI credentials. Bodine's mother has psychic powers strong enough to kill, but she meets her match in Hammersmith, DeSilva, Savitch, and Sherlock.
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.Pub Date: July 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9365-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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