A mystery with a sharp protagonist whose appeal is matched by that of the characters surrounding him.
Former cop Jack Stratton takes a case in his parents’ gated community in this installment of Greyson’s (And Then She Was Gone, 2016, etc.) mystery series.
Jack had planned to spend a few days with his father and mother, Ted and Laura Stratton, at their Florida home, where he planned to finally introduce them to his longtime girlfriend, Alice Campbell, in person. Unfortunately, Lady, Jack’s 120-pound king shepherd dog, becomes a last-minute traveling companion, as the proposed kennel they’d chosen turned out to be rather dismal. But there are rules at the Strattons’ gated community, Orange Blossom Cove, including a requirement that dogs must always be leashed. This isn’t always easy to do with Lady, which peeves the Strattons’ neighbors. Jack’s vacation seems to be over before it starts when Laura, along with her book-club pals, insists that he help stop the Orange Blossom Cove Bandit, who’s responsible for a string of recent thefts. After the bandit attempts to burgle the Stratton house, Jack agrees to look into it, if only not to disappoint his mother. Alice, meanwhile, wants to make a good impression on her boyfriend’s parents, so she takes part in a ladies’-night stakeout with Laura and her local friends. But while questioning community residents, Jack uncovers evidence of a breaking and entering at the home of a recently deceased man whose lethal heart attack may have actually been murder. Soon other dead bodies turn up, and the desperate killer’s next target may be someone close to Jack. Greyson’s mystery is relatively lighthearted thanks to a motley bunch of diverting characters. Laura’s friends are particularly amusing, as when they concoct a scheme to catch the bandit red-handed that entails doing something that’s not entirely legal. (Jack later refers to the women as “the Golden Girl Commando Squad.”) Lady, too, is a fully developed character; the colossal canine is generally used as comic relief (as when it seemingly blames Jack for its time in a cargo hold), but she’s also fiercely protective. There are occasional comic antics, as when Jack learns the hard way that Ted’s story about a wild gator tromping through the community is true. But there are plenty of serious subplots, as well, including a side mystery involving Alice’s late parents. Despite the often humorous tone, though, one villain, whose identity is revealed early, is quite menacing. The real puzzle for readers is who this baddie’s collaborator is; also mysterious is the true importance of the stolen items. The mystery’s solution employs an intriguing mix of strategies: Jack professionally sets a trap for the bandit, but the book club’s relatively amateurish investigation actually produces some fruit. The narrative is predominantly taken up with light banter, but Jack is shown to be a keen observer, as well: at one point, for instance, he peruses an “immaculate and orderly” room, specifically noting the arrangement of objects and the lack of pictures on the wall.
A mystery with a sharp protagonist whose appeal is matched by that of the characters surrounding him.Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 260
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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