Tepid thrills, but interesting history and geography.
Solving the theft of a recently unearthed, pre-Columbian, Chinese map of the world calls for the highly specialized skills of a Manhattan lawyer and art historian.
The map, briefly studied before its disappearance, was a stunner. Ben Coleman, archaeologist on the dig near Xi’an where an interesting mummy was also discovered, saw enough to know that if the fabulously valuable scroll’s suspected antiquity can be verified, China will have bragging rights as discoverer of sea routes long claimed by Portugal. Ben’s financial backer Richard Tobias, a snooty archconservative political figure, has the megabucks at hand to engage Mara Coyne to recover the map. Mara is a lawyer who has carved out a niche for herself putting art objects back where they belong. Terrell (The Chrysalis, 2007) weaves Mara’s voyage of discovery into the history of Ma Zhi, cartographer to the legendary eunuch admiral Zheng He, and that of Portuguese sailor Antonio Coelho, an officer on Vasco da Gama’s voyage to India, packing hefty loads of history into her slightly rickety thriller framework. Moving quickly to identify the thief before the treasure makes it into the hands of some unscrupulous collector, Mara jets off to China where she uses her professional contacts to come up with the name of the criminal boss near Xi’an who can set her on the trail. Teaming up with the hunky Ben, Mara gets a lead that takes her first to Italy and then to Lisbon, where she has been told that a Senhor Dias is the man most likely to have gotten his hands on the map. There is much snooping around Portugal, and much of the snooping has more than a whiff of Nancy Drew, with hidden rooms and secret clues and a scary Chinese guy following them everywhere. The historical threads are less swoony, although mapmaker Zhi, whose voluntary castration made him eligible for Imperial service, does pine for his ladylove.
Tepid thrills, but interesting history and geography.Pub Date: July 29, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-345-49468-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2008
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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