A fun, fresh take on a SF trope with enough surprises to keep readers guessing.
Busch’s SF thriller spans 70-plus years, from World War II into the new millennium.
Unsuspecting sailors aboard the USS Eldridge in 1943 are the subjects of an experiment conducted by the United States Navy in which their ship physically disappears then reappears; the experiment goes awry, killing many and wounding several others, including Third Mate Peter Smithwick, whose legs must be amputated at the knees. The narrative flashes forward to present day North Carolina, where religious handyman and all-around nice-guy Orvin Littney meets his new neighbor, the mysterious Geoffrey Cannon. While out on a walk, Orvin nearly dies of a heart attack, and as he hangs in the balance between life and death, Geoffrey miraculously saves him. Such miracles explain why, Orvin soon learns, Geoffrey has a cult following in the self-help and alternative philosophy world. Such a dedicated following, in fact, that Geoffrey has been known to romance his female sycophants. The problem is, the women who sleep with him keep ending up murdered under mysterious circumstances. Geoffrey likes to be rough, but he hasn’t killed anyone, and the forensics gathered confirm as much. But readers soon learn soon there’s more to the story when the author reveals just who Geoffrey is: the very Peter Smithwick who nearly died on the USS Eldridge and, by all rights, should be in his 90s by now. And yet—Geoffrey is a young, hale man. Once readers meet Geoffrey’s “handler,” the enigmatic and extraterrestrial “Edward,” the mystery only gets foggier—oh, and there is also Bigfoot to contend with: “Not a bear. But huge, and he could almost hear the rumors…Bigfoot. Sasquatch. Yeti.” There is a lot going on in this novel, but the snappy prose and a suspenseful plot make for an exciting read, and the mystery will keep readers turning the pages. The well-drawn Geoffrey and Orvin are sure to become favorites.
A fun, fresh take on a SF trope with enough surprises to keep readers guessing.Pub Date: April 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781964024042
Page Count: 352
Publisher: UBiQ Press
Review Posted Online: March 21, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Gloriously artificial, improbable, and ingenious. Fans of both versions of Horowitz will rejoice.
What begins as a decorous whodunit set in a gated community on the River Thames turns out to be another metafictional romp for mystery writer Anthony Horowitz and his frequent collaborator, ex-DI Daniel Hawthorne.
Everyone in Riverview Close hates Giles Kenworthy, an entitled hedge fund manager who bought Riverview Lodge from chess grandmaster Adam Strauss when the failure of Adam’s chess-themed TV show forced him and his wife, Teri, to downsize to The Stables at the opposite end of the development. So the surprise when Kenworthy’s wife, retired air hostess Lynda, returns home from an evening out with her French teacher, Jean-François, to find her husband’s dead body is mainly restricted to the manner of his death: He’s been shot through the throat with an arrow. Suspects include—and seem to be limited to—Richmond GP Dr. Tom Beresford and his wife, jewelry designer Gemma; widowed ex-nuns May Winslow and Phyllis Moore; and retired barrister Andrew Pennington, whose name is one of many nods to Agatha Christie. Detective Superintendent Tariq Khan, feeling outside his element, calls in Hawthorne and his old friend John Dudley as consultants, and eventually the case is marked as solved. Five years later, Horowitz, needing to plot and write a new novel on short notice, asks Hawthorne if he can supply enough information about the case to serve as its basis, launching another prickly collaboration in which Hawthorne conceals as much as he reveals. To say more, as usual with this ultrabrainy series, would spoil the string of surprises the real-life author has planted like so many explosive devices.
Gloriously artificial, improbable, and ingenious. Fans of both versions of Horowitz will rejoice.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780063305649
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
Squeamish readers will find this isn’t their cup of tea.
Dexter meets Killing Eve in Wallace’s dark comic thriller debut.
While accepting condolences following her father’s funeral, 30-something narrator Claire receives an email saying that one of her paintings is a finalist for a prize. But her joy is short-circuited the next morning when she learns in a second apologetic note that the initial email had been sent to the wrong Claire. The sender, Lucas Kane, is “terribly, terribly sorry” for his mistake. Claire, torn between her anger and suicidal thoughts, has doubts about his sincerity and stalks him to a London pub, where his fate is sealed: “I stare at Lucas Kane in real life, and within moments I know. He doesn’t look sorry.” She dispatches and buries Lucas in her back garden, but this crime does not go unnoticed. Proud of her meticulous standards as a serial killer, Claire wonders if her grief for her father is making her reckless as she seeks to identify the blackmailer among the members of her weekly bereavement support group. The female serial killer as antihero is a growing subgenre (see Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer, 2018), and Wallace’s sociopathic protagonist is a mordantly amusing addition; the tool she uses to interact with ordinary people while hiding her homicidal nature is especially sardonic: “Whenever I’m unsure of how I’m expected to respond, I use a cliché. Even if I’m not sure what it means, even if I use it incorrectly, no one ever seems to mind.” The well-written storyline tackles some tough subjects—dementia, elder abuse, and parental cruelty—but the convoluted plot starts to drag at the halfway point. Given the lack of empathy in Claire’s narration, most of the characters come across as not very likable, and the reader tires of her sneering contempt.
Squeamish readers will find this isn’t their cup of tea.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780143136170
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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