A multigenre espionage tale that’s unquestionably entertaining.
In Douglas’ debut sci-fi thriller, an anonymous source puts a former FBI agent on the trail of a government conspiracy involving aliens.
Private investigator and ex–federal agent William Harrison doesn’t know who’s sending him postcards signed “Echo Tango.” But whoever it is, “ET” claims that there’s been a long government coverup, starting in 1947 in Roswell, New Mexico, where two UFOs crashed. Five military policemen who witnessed the event died soon afterward in supposed accidents. Now the same thing may be happening again, as a UFO sighting mere months ago seems to have resulted in similar mishaps. Harrison teams up with his old FBI partner, Art Holcomb, and Nick Ridley, a Las Vegas cop whose brother-in-law may have fallen prey to the coverup. Once they find ET, the small group plans to bring down the Saint Mary Project, a government initiative to keep aliens a secret by any means necessary. This energetic thriller leans much more toward espionage than sci-fi, but its sprinkling of fantastical elements makes it a standout. Readers aren’t privy to any information about the aliens that the heroes don’t have, and this uncertainty generates a high level of suspense. At the same time, there’s enough sci-fi material to keep fans engrossed; for example, the (human) villains are aware of four alien species, but a largely unknown fifth one has them on edge. There are also a couple of alien-human hybrids, and at least one of them is working for the baddies. A bit of romance between Harrison and Janice, the new intern at his PI office, pales in comparison to the camaraderie among the men, who band together like soldiers. Readers will cheer when one of them saves another and become anxious when one of them disappears. There’s a definite resolution to the story but nary a break in the action until the end.
A multigenre espionage tale that’s unquestionably entertaining.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2014
ISBN: 978-0990737100
Page Count: 468
Publisher: Geminid Press, LLC
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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