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STOPPING POWER

A first-rate cast drives this brisk, exhilarating action tale.

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A single mother leads a high-speed chase in order to save her teen daughter in this thriller.

California real estate agent Stephanie Power is making time for her daughter. While her ex-husband drags out an ugly custody dispute, Stephanie takes 16-year-old Libby on a Texas road trip in their brand-new RV. Unfortunately, trouble lurks, as Libby and the RV vanish at a gas station. The kidnapper calls Stephanie with a bizarre order—drive a BMW north with the gas pedal floored. The caller, German Ilsa Bakke, is hot off an armored-car heist. Though she and her crew separated, Ilsa has the loot and wants Stephanie to distract the cops pursuing the getaway car. She tells Stephanie: “If you stop for any reason, kid dies. If you crash, kid dies. If the cops catch you, kid dies. If you make it for one hour you will see your kid again. Clear?” The police are no help, convinced that the woman behind the BMW’s wheel is the robber. But Stephanie’s boyfriend, Dan Crockett, does what he can as he watches TV news coverage of the chase. Things get even more complicated when members of the still-at-large heist crew join the pursuit to get their hands on the stolen goods. Red’s kinetic story hits the ground running, opening with the mother and daughter on the road and accelerating quickly with Libby in peril. Copious flashbacks follow, including scenes of Stephanie’s failed marriage and the robbers plotting the heist, but these brief subplots hardly affect the narrative momentum. Red, who’s written or co-written such classic horror films as The Hitcher and Near Dark, specializes in scene-stealing baddies. Ilsa is no exception; just when she seems sympathetic, her sadistic, possibly psychotic side reveals itself. Stephanie is equally indelible, utilizing skills she’s picked up from her Hollywood stuntman father. While the story offers few surprises, readers will bask in the taut action scenes and blistering final act. There’s dark humor as well, such as two wounded guys from the heist strolling into a CVS for painkillers.

A first-rate cast drives this brisk, exhilarating action tale.

Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2021

ISBN: 978-3-9603460-3-6

Page Count: 297

Publisher: Editions Moustache

Review Posted Online: May 12, 2022

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  • New York Times Bestseller

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DEVOLUTION

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

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  • New York Times Bestseller

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

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THEN SHE WAS GONE

Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.

Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.

Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.

Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.

Pub Date: April 24, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Atria

Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018

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