This fast-paced narrative effectively mixes intense family drama with rapid-fire action.
An ordinary man seeks the truth about his family in Depression-era Kansas in Armstrong’s historical thriller.
Jedidiah Albright, an average man estranged from his wife and family by tragedy and hardship, is working as a railway mail clerk in the Dust Bowl of Kansas in the year 1930 when he encounters 17-year-old Madeleine Robichaux, who could be the twin of his sister, Carrie—and is the age Carrie was when she vanished from the family homestead in 1912. Knowing Madeleine is adopted and certain there must be a connection, Jed enlists the help of his surly older brother, Arthur (an FBI agent), unwittingly setting in motion a complicated chain of events that spins the narrative into mystery/thriller territory. The story alternates between 1930 and 1911, when the orphaned Jed, Arthur, Carrie, and their oddball younger brother, Tim, struggled to stake a land claim by turning virgin prairie into farmland. While the farm proved to be a failure, oil exploration in the region makes its mineral rights valuable in 1930. Inspiredby aspects of his grandfather’s life, the author authentically evokes the story’s two eras, whether describing the landscape, the people, or the vast changes in society that occurred over less than two decades, and offers a cynical view of the greed, self-interest, and official corruption that ran rampant. In keeping with the times in which the story takes place, a few unpleasant characters use racial slurs. Jed’s railway mail clerk job, which combines strict routine with sudden dangers—he carries a service revolver—perfectly suits his character: honest and unassuming yet capable of iron-willed determination and grit to protect those he cares about. Pithy descriptions bring secondary characters to life: A prissy friend of Tim’s shakes Jed’s hand “as if working a lever on an etiquette vending machine.” Female characters, including Carrie, Madeleine, and Jed’s wife, Amanda, are strong and realistic, and Jed is a sympathetic and relatable protagonist.
This fast-paced narrative effectively mixes intense family drama with rapid-fire action.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9788218184360
Page Count: 321
Publisher: Lexington House Press
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2023
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
The best news of all: The climax leaves the door open to further reports from the hilariously misnamed British Intelligence.
A series of mounting complications leads to yet another fight to the death between the discarded intelligence agents of Slough House and the morally bankrupt head of MI5.
As Jackson Lamb’s motley crew on Aldersgate Street struggles to cope with the deaths of River Cartwright’s grandfather and mentor, intelligence veteran David Cartwright, and their dim, beloved colleague Min Harper, new troubles are brewing. Diana Taverner, who runs the British Intelligence Service from Regent’s Park, is being blackmailed by former MP Peter Judd to do his bidding. Nothing untoward about that, of course, but this time, Judd’s demands, backed by a compromising tape recording, are more pressing than usual. So Diana reconvenes the Brains Trust—Al Hawke, Avril Potts, Daisy Wessex, and their ex-boss Charles Cornell Stamoran—whose last assignment was to serve as the contact for psychopathic IRA informant Dougie Malone while turning a blind eye to his multiple rapes and murders, which were really none of the Crown’s business. Taverner’s new assignment for the Brains Trust is the assassination of Judd. Since all these developments are filtered through the riotously cynical lens of Herron’s imagination, nothing goes as planned, and when the smoke clears, the fatalities don’t include Judd. Now that Judd knows he has as much reason to fear Taverner as she does to fear him, Lamb offers to broker a peace meeting between them which Slough House computer geek Roddy Ho will keep secret by knocking out 37 security cameras around Taverner’s dwelling. What could possibly go wrong?
The best news of all: The climax leaves the door open to further reports from the hilariously misnamed British Intelligence.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9781641297264
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Soho Crime
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
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