A scattered and implausible thriller.
Hired to protect superstar Chicago news anchor Morgan Shaw, who says someone is trying to kill her, Black cop-turned–PI Ashe Cayne is drawn into investigating a police shooting that might be related.
A vision of perfection—“her eyes were a radiant topaz against flawless skin the color of warm cocoa butter”—Morgan seemingly has it all. Fabulously wealthy, she is “all but deified” by her legions of fans. But she has been feeling the heat from a rising young evening anchor at another station: the blond and beautiful Alicia Roscati. Desperate for news she can break to boost her dominance in the ratings, Morgan makes up the story about being stalked as a way to meet Cayne and persuade him to uncover the truth about the apparent execution of a young Black man by an undercover cop. In due course, Alicia dies a mysterious death; Cayne figures out that there's more to Morgan's supposedly kaput, kinky affair with married Illinois Senate Majority Leader Reinhardt Schmidt than she's letting on; and the wisecracking Ashe and his muscle-bound sideman, Mechanic, are attacked by Schmidt’s henchmen. Celebrity TV doctor Smith's third Cayne novel, following Wolf Point (2021), has the makings of a good and timely mystery. But the author becomes too easily distracted with gratuitous plot elements, including the return of the jilted Ashe’s ex-fiancee. And for a Chicagoan who makes so much of the city's settings and milieu, Smith gets a lot wrong, including the fantastical notion of an Oprah-like anchor in the Windy City, where there hasn't been anything resembling a star newscaster in many years. Those who know Chicago may find his odd practice of twisting the names of real-life celebrities—activist priest Michael Pfleger becomes Father Flagger, veteran anchorwoman Allison Rosati becomes Alicia Roscati—annoying. Thankfully, Bill Murray remains Bill Murray.
A scattered and implausible thriller.Pub Date: May 30, 2023
ISBN: 9780063253711
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
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
“Nasty little fellows…always get their comeuppance,” a movie character once said. Deeply satisfying.
Following the mysterious disappearance of his wife, a struggling London novelist journeys to a remote Scottish island to try to get his mojo back—but all, of course, is not what it seems.
Grady Green hits the pinnacle of his publishing career on the same night that his life goes off the rails—first his book lands on the New York Times bestseller list, and then his wife, Abby, goes missing on her way home. A year later, Grady is a mere shadow of his former self: out of money and out of ideas. So, when his agent, Abby’s godmother, suggests that he spend some time on the Isle of Amberly, in a log cabin left to her by one of her writers, it seems as good a plan as any. With free housing for himself and his dog and a beautiful, distraction-free environment, maybe he can finally complete the next novel. But from the very beginning, Grady’s experiences with Amberly seem weird, if not downright ominous: As a visitor, he’s not allowed to bring his car onto the island; the local businesses are only open for a few hours at a time; and there are no birds. At all. Not to mention the skeletal hand he finds buried under the floorboards of the cabin, the creepy harmonica music in the woods, and the occasional sighting of a woman in a red coat who’s a dead ringer for Abby. As Grady falls deeper and deeper into insomnia and alcoholism, he begins to realize his being on the island is no accident—and that should make him very afraid. Through occasional chapters from before Abby’s disappearance, told from her point of view, we learn that Grady is not necessarily a reliable narrator, and the book’s slow unfolding of dread, mystery, and then truth is both creative and well-paced. Every chapter heading is an oxymoron, like the title, reminding us of the contradictions at the heart of every story.
“Nasty little fellows…always get their comeuppance,” a movie character once said. Deeply satisfying.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781250337788
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2024
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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