Exhilarating pabulum for action fans weary of heroes who bother to maintain social lives.
Evan Smoak, the Nowhere Man, crashes out of retirement to battle a violent threat even less human than he is.
Some agents are trained assassins. Evan is better described as engineered by Jack Johns, the Mystery Man who spirited him off from the Pride House Group Home when he was 12, honed the skills that made him a superlative killing machine, neglected less desirable aspects of his personality (like the ability to make small talk or show empathy), and turned him loose on a world in need of a superavenger. Now that he’s finally hung up his blood-soaked laurels, Evan just wants to be left alone, but that’s not on the agenda of Veronica LeGrande, the attractive 62-year-old who suddenly reveals herself as his mother so that she can beg him to protect Andrew Duran, a fellow alumnus of Pride House whom he hasn’t seen for many years. It’s a big ask, partly because Andre, as Evan once knew him, doesn’t want to be protected and partly because the enemies Andre was exposed to in his unlikely role as the midnight guard on an impound lot are seriously mean. Shortly after Andre accepted the promise of $1,000 from brother-and-sister killers Declan and Queenie Gentner to tell them when Jake Hargreave picked up the Bronco he crashed and abandoned, Hargreave returned, Andre made the call, and Hargreave’s throat was cut in the lot by a tiny, murderous drone. The man behind Mimeticom, drone king Brendan Molleken, has clearly studied all the villains in the James Bond movies, and there’s no limit on the possible carnage when Evan meets Molleken, the Gentners, or any of those drones.
Exhilarating pabulum for action fans weary of heroes who bother to maintain social lives.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-2502-5228-9
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
A fresh, funny, ambitious, and nuanced take on some of our oldest existential questions. Cannot wait for the TV series.
What would you do if you knew when you were going to die?
In the first page and a half of her latest page-turner, bestselling Australian author Moriarty introduces a large cast of fascinating characters, all seated on a flight to Sydney that’s delayed on the tarmac. There’s the “bespectacled hipster” with his arm in a cast; a very pregnant woman; a young mom with a screaming infant and a sweaty toddler; a bride and groom, still in their wedding clothes; a surly 6-year-old forced to miss a laser-tag party; a darling elderly couple; a chatty tourist pair; several others. No one even notices the woman who will later become a household name as the “Death Lady” until she hops up from her seat and begins to deliver predictions to each of them about the age they’ll be when they die and the cause of their deaths. Age 30, assault, for the hipster. Age 7, drowning, for the baby in arms. Age 43, workplace accident, for a 42-year-old civil engineer. Self-harm, age 28, for the lovely flight attendant, who is that day celebrating her 28th birthday. Over the next 126 chapters (some just a paragraph), you will get to know all these people, and their reactions to the news of their demise, very well. Best of all, you will get to know Cherry Lockwood, the Death Lady, and the life that brought her to this day. Is it true, as she repeatedly intones on the plane, that “fate won’t be fought”? Does this novel support the idea that clairvoyance is real? Does it find a means to logically dismiss the whole thing? Or is it some complex amalgam of these possibilities? Sorry, you won’t find that out here, and in fact not until you’ve turned all 500-plus pages. The story is a brilliant, charming, and invigorating illustration of its closing quote from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (we’re not going to spill that either).
A fresh, funny, ambitious, and nuanced take on some of our oldest existential questions. Cannot wait for the TV series.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9780593798607
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
Expert, but unsurprising.
The death of an old friend who was more than a friend sends Dr. Kay Scarpetta down her latest rabbit hole.
If every body tells a story, the corpse of 7-year-old Luna Briley sings the blues. On top of the many signs of ongoing physical abuse, there’s the fatal gunshot wound to her head. Ryder and Piper Briley, the wealthy and powerful parents who didn’t call the police until after their daughter died, insist that Luna’s death was an accident, or maybe a suicide. Scarpetta doesn’t think so, and her refusal to release the body to the Brileys’ hand-picked mortician moves them to legal action against her as Virginia’s chief medical examiner. You’d think it would be a relief to put this case aside for another when Scarpetta’s niece, Secret Service agent Lucy Farinelli, calls her and ferries her by helicopter to an abandoned Oz theme park owned by Ryder Briley, but this one’s even more heartbreaking. Scarpetta is there to examine the body of astrophysicist Sal Giordano, her close friend and former lover, who was evidently kidnapped, held in captivity for several hours, and tossed out of an unidentified aircraft. The leading suspects are the Brileys; Carrie Grethen, Lucy’s sociopathic ex-lover, with whom Scarpetta has repeatedly tangled in the past; and the UFO that dumped Giordano’s body without leaving the usual traces for air-traffic technologies to pick up. The multiple rounds of physical examinations Scarpetta conducts on both victims are every bit as meticulous and gripping as fans would expect; the killer’s identity is neither surprising nor interesting, but Cornwell juggles her trademark forensics, and the paranormal hints she’s become increasingly invested in, more dexterously than usual.
Expert, but unsurprising.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9781538770382
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024
BOOK TO SCREEN
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