Memorable characters drive an atmospheric thriller.
In this mystery set in 2002, a Manhattan lawyer joins his sheriff brother’s murder investigation in the siblings’ hometown.
Tom Morgan’s plans for a relaxing beach vacation change at the last minute. The attorney returns home to Coldwater, an upstate New York town, to help care for his recently injured mother. But on the day he arrives, a body surfaces in the community’s eponymous lake, which shares its shoreline with Quebec. As Tom’s family doesn’t want him on his phone all week, his younger brother, Joe, the town sheriff, suggests he occupy his time by helping solve the murder. The lawyer may have a further incentive as well—he knew the victim, Billy Pearce, the brother of Tom’s high school sweetheart, Susan. The Morgans quickly zero in on a local bio-research company where Susan works. The company is in the same building Billy supposedly broke into mere weeks ago. It’s not long before Tom reconnects with Susan as well as others from his past, including a thuggish man he scuffled with at a high school dance. After a mysterious illness shockingly sidelines Joe, Tom is on his own, no longer under the protection of his brother who carries a gun and has hefty muscles. It seems several people had a motive to want Billy dead, and almost as many were willing to make it happen. As Tom draws closer to unmasking a killer, he has run-ins with dangerous individuals who may put the attorney in the line of fire. Complicating matters further is the possibility that people in Coldwater harbor startling secrets—including Tom’s brother.
Ross fills his mystery with realistically flawed characters. For example, the Morgans’ mother, though she unquestionably loves her sons, mercilessly criticizes Tom—for being single, childless, and a workaholic as well as not visiting often enough. Setting this novel in the protagonist’s hometown gives the story a rock-solid foundation; though Billy had been a troubled man, Tom remembers him as the little boy who would “tag along” on his dates with Susan. At the same time, a gloomy history burdens Tom and Joe—their father also held the job of sheriff, and his life ended in a brutal homicide. Narrative tension gradually rises; along with his solo investigation, Tom has problems back at his law firm, as his link to a decade-old construction project may cost him his job. He’s moreover surrounded by deceitful people, most of whom seem quite capable of murder. This dodgy cast couples nicely with the moody ambience; as it’s October in a town just south of Canada, a perpetual chill affects everyone and renders Coldwater Lake a dark, icy crime scene. Fortunately, Tom’s dry wit offers welcome relief from the generally serious tone. His initial interrogations are hilariously blunt: “My little brother wants to know where you were on Saturday night.” Even after becoming a more skilled investigator, he’s still cheeky; responding to someone asking if he has an ID, Tom says: “None that would mean anything to you.” Though revealing the murderer involves copious theories and prolonged explanations, the story never lingers as it forges ahead to a gratifying conclusion.
Memorable characters drive an atmospheric thriller.Pub Date: April 27, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-953789-54-9
Page Count: 292
Publisher: Level Best Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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