A nerve-wracking, vibrantly dramatic tale with an empathetic protagonist.
In Rising’s debut thriller, a Texas college professor in 1977 tries to prove the innocence of her young student, a suspected terrorist imprisoned in Israel.
Political science professor Caroline Cavanaugh is shocked when she hears that Israeli authorities have detained 22-year-old Lydia Fleming, one of her students at the University of Texas. When FBI agents question Caroline, as well as Lydia’s grandmother Norma Rodriguez, it’s clear that the feds believe that their suspect is associated with the Palestine Liberation Organization. Over the last 10 months, Caroline had grown close to Lydia, who’d traveled the world as a flight attendant. The young woman staunchly supported and sympathized with Palestine, as she’d seen some of its people, who were sickly and living in poverty. Caroline is baffled about why Lydia was in Israel, though, as the young woman had been planning to attend American University in Beirut. After Caroline travels overseas to be a character witness, along with Lydia’s mom, Barbara Dilcher, she learns about several other things that Lydia kept to herself, including a possible affair with a male professor back home. But Caroline is certain that Lydia is no terrorist, particularly because the dubious evidence against her includes multiple written confessions in Hebrew, which Lydia neither speaks nor writes. While they’re in Israel, someone breaks into Caroline and Barbara’s hotel room while they’re out, and later, they notice someone following them. Rising’s unhurried narrative thoroughly establishes Caroline and Lydia’s intricate relationship in flashbacks set several months before the student’s arrest. Caroline is shown to be professional, but she senses that she and Lydia may have something deeper than just a teacher-student bond; elsewhere, the story hints that the professor also has romantic feelings for her former college-debate partner, Maggie. Caroline’s devotion to bringing Lydia home feels believable, and it’s devastating when the professor begins to doubt her student’s account. The author weaves some conspiracy elements into the plot, but at such a meticulous pace that the twists, while effective, seem less surprising than inevitable—and frighteningly unavoidable.
A nerve-wracking, vibrantly dramatic tale with an empathetic protagonist.Pub Date: May 22, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 257
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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