A brashly retro escapist caper reminiscent of Topkapi and just as likely to be filmed.
The creator of Dexter Morgan, everyone’s favorite homicidal sociopath (Dexter Is Dead, 2015, etc.), dials down the mayhem just enough to introduce a master thief who’s equally proficient at his trade.
Riley Wolfe is bored. Every single one of his heists, even the theft of a 12.5-ton sculpture from Chicago’s Nesselrode Plaza during its dedication ceremony, goes off so seamlessly that there are no new mountains left to scale—almost literally, since Riley is accomplished in parkour as well as larceny. Looking for a suitably impossible challenge, he decides to steal the Daryayeh-E-Noor (Ocean of Light) diamond from among the Iranian crown jewels. The Islamic Republic obligingly makes the job easier by sending the jewels from their impregnable stronghold in Tehran to New York’s Eberhardt Museum, a display site that promises to be exceptionally well armored but not quite as unbreachable. Riley’s plot, as preposterous as it is absorbing, involves multiple disguises, multiple forged artworks supplied by his friend and one-time lover, Monique, and, for better or worse, multiple murders he carries out in between dispensing matter-of-fact bromides like “it doesn’t pay to have friends, because you have to trust them, and that never works out.” But you can’t make headlines without breaking some necks, and Riley, though he takes no particular pleasure in dispatching the unsuspecting souls who stand between him and the Daryayeh-E-Noor, is fully up to the task. About the only thing that casts doubt on the ultimate success of his plan, which pleasingly unfolds with nary a hint of foreshadowing about ways and means, is his devotion to his long-comatose mother, an attachment Chicago FBI agent Frank Delgado, as fanatic as Riley in his way, picks up on after an inexplicable brain wave tells him that Riley’s targeted the diamond, setting in motion a familiar game of cat and mouse, or cat and other cat.
A brashly retro escapist caper reminiscent of Topkapi and just as likely to be filmed.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4394-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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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