An action-packed and surprisingly poignant yarn about a man’s search for himself as he enters his golden years.
A 70-year-old, recently retired business owner decides to liven up his boring existence by becoming a detective in Marks’ crime thriller.
Widower David Blazen was looking forward to retirement after 50 years of running his own company, which sold “impulse merchandise” of all kinds. He and his girlfriend, Mary, who is also retired, have grand plans for their newfound freedom and independence. But just a few months into his retirement, Blazen is already bored—so much so that he has already gotten in trouble at the health club he frequents every day for his “obsessive snooping” on the other patrons. Inquisitive by nature, Blazen has found entertainment in the health club regulars’ personal lives, and has become fixated on some things, like a mysterious staircase in the club. With Mary increasingly worried about her boyfriend’s state of mind, Blazen does some soul-searching, trying to figure out how he wants to spend the rest of his suddenly mind-numbingly mundane existence. He remembers his dreams as a boy: “I loved to watch Saturday morning television, where Superman stood for justice and Captain America defended our country from evil.” And so, with television icons like Columbo, Kojak, and Magnum PI as inspirations, Blazen decides to become a detective. Not wanting to waste time, he procures pamphlets from a potentially illegitimate institution offering some kind of certificate, has business cards printed up under the moniker “Blaze,” and begins his new adventure. When the nephew of a prominent crime boss is murdered—and the city braces for a potential war between organized crime factions—Blaze quickly finds himself entangled in a dangerous conflict that includes a ruthless crime lord who deifies Al Capone, a morally bankrupt mayoral candidate who would do anything to run Chicago, an undercover FBI investigation, and numerous secondary characters who would fit in well in a Coen Brothers movie, including a duo of Jewish assassins and some gas station attendants who are also cannibals.
The entire novel, in fact, has a decidedly Fargo-like vibe: “The soft powder blanketed the ground and nestled against the bare trees, making for a truly picturesque setting, momentarily distracting Hanford from what he thought he was about to see. He’d already glimpsed two freshly dead bodies and the horror that was inside the… gas station yesterday.” The endearing amateur sleuth, an impressively intricate plotline, and the laugh-out-loud humor in places (what action hero worries about their enlarged prostate?) easily make up for some sequences that stretch the bounds of believability. Also of note is the subtle social commentary; statements like this one will surely resonant with readers: “Society has become selfish. We don’t care about other people like we used to, and honestly, I don’t know that we even notice other people anymore. We’re all too obsessed with ourselves and specifically our smartphones.” But the real power here is in the relatability of Blaze; we’re all searching for purpose and fulfillment in our lives, and this crime fiction adventure is both heartwarming and inspiring.
An action-packed and surprisingly poignant yarn about a man’s search for himself as he enters his golden years.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2023
ISBN: 9798887470801
Page Count: 535
Publisher: Wheatmark
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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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