A trembling translation of 19th-century female horror tropes to a new era that may not be all that new.
The spirits of Edgar Allan Poe and Sarah Helen Whitman, the transcendentalist poet who almost became his wife, haunt this modern-day tale of a new widow seeking only to forget her past.
Even after she moves from New Jersey to Rhode Island, cozy mystery novelist Saoirse White is still tormented by the voice of her husband, attorney Jonathan White, who suffered a fatal heart attack nine months ago. She doesn’t want to talk about his last days; she doesn’t want his best friend, Aidan Vesper, to show her his final text; she doesn’t want to spend a minute longer than she has to in the company of his family. Instead, she moves back to Providence, where she and Jonathan first met as students at Brown, resolved to put the past behind her. No such luck. As local spiritualists Lucretia, Mia, and Roberto excitedly inform her, the house at 88 Benefit Street that she’s rented is the old Whitman House, where Sarah Helen Whitman lived and wrote 175 years ago. Overcoming a terror of new experiences nearly equal to her revulsion at the past, she allows her new acquaintances to draw her into a séance in what she considers her new home, and they consider holy ground. But the person who draws her out most dramatically is Emmit Powell, a Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist who teaches at Brown. For whatever reason, he’s magnetically drawn to Saoirse and won’t take no for an answer. After the briefest of intervals, the fragile Saoirse’s no longer inclined to say no, and their relationship rapidly spirals from neo-gothic into high (or low) gothic territory.
A trembling translation of 19th-century female horror tropes to a new era that may not be all that new.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9781662513275
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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
A potent and surprising novel by the ever-reliable Crais.
Hired to find the father of celebrity “muffin girl” Traci Beller 10 years after his disappearance, PI Elvis Cole uncovers a nefarious plot that puts his life and those he contacts at risk.
The sweetly likable Traci, now 23, has amassed a huge following with her website, The Baker Next Door, and on social media. Against the advice and self-interest of the people who over-manage her career, she decides to find out what happened to her father. Cole quickly determines that he was last seen at the SurfMutt hamburger stand, where he gave a ride to Anya Given, a troubled 15-year-old whose mother, Sadie, was late in picking her up from the skate park across the street. With the reluctant help of a scattered young woman who used to work at the burger joint, Cole tracks down Anya and Sadie, who is eventually revealed to have a criminal past. For his efforts, he’s jumped by a small gang of men who send him to the hospital with the worst beating of his life. (Asked by a nurse what his name is, the best he can guess is “Los Angeles.”) Still in recovery, Cole and Joe Pike, his ex-Marine partner, trace his attackers to Sadie, with unexpected results. As ever, Crais draws the reader in via his protagonist’s casual, dryly humorous manner and the book’s relaxed ties to classic noir. Slowly but surely, the plot gains intensity and deadly purpose. Just when you think the missing persons case is solved, Crais ratchets things up with a devastating follow-through. This is the L.A. novelist’s 20th Cole mystery, following such efforts as The Watchman (2007) and Racing the Light (2022). It may be his most powerful.
A potent and surprising novel by the ever-reliable Crais.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9780525535768
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
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