An astutely crafted, action-packed read.
A murder mystery revolving around government corruption in Poland.
Łukasz Kaminski wakes to find himself battered from an assault in downtown Warsaw. His memory diminished, he can’t recall the details of the attack but knows his daughter, Basia, is dead. Her death is ruled a suicide, but Łukasz is deeply skeptical because she was an exuberant girl who embraced life. A veteran reporter, he suspects her death might be a murder, potentially caused by his sensitive investigation into political corruption, beginning with a prominent minister for whom Basia had just begun working. Also, his newspaper editor tried to steer him off the trail with the promise of an unexpected promotion. Meanwhile, Adam Kaminski, a Philadelphia police officer, travels to Poland as part of a special delegation solidifying national ties between the U.S. and Poland. Adam, only picked because the first choice suddenly backed out, confesses he has no special knowledge of the country his grandfather was born in. He reads of Basia’s death in a newspaper and is both intrigued by the story and skeptical about the conclusions investigators draw about its cause. He feels compelled, maybe as a matter of professional instinct, to make inquiries of his own, and he quickly discovers that Łukasz shares his last name because they are related. Together, they delve into an increasingly dark web of crime, challenged by dangerous resistance. This isn’t merely a murder mystery, but reflections on the proper relation to the past and the challenges of understanding and reconciling oneself with it. One governmental minister explicitly warns against unsettling the dust of yesteryear. “You shouldn’t do that, Pan Kaminski….Don’t go looking into the past. You do not know how strongly people feel about the past or about the changes that are coming.” The story unfolds vigorously, keeping the reader pinned to the plot. There’s a romantic element as well: from the very beginning, Adam is pulled between two potential love interests. First-time author Gorman’s prose falls short of perfection, but the artful suspense makes for a worthwhile ride.
An astutely crafted, action-packed read.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2015
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 279
Publisher: Blue Eagle Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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