Altman (A Game of Spies, 2002, etc.) keeps his multiple balls in the air with deft economy, some twists, and the right ratio...
Modest chase thriller, Altman’s third, with abundant international color and great pace.
An impossibly young-looking assassin (casual passersby think he’s a boy) efficiently carries out his contract on the Epstein couple only to realize a moment later that he’s killed the wrong Epsteins. Cut to the Adriatic Sea and skittish, single Hannah Gray in her tiny cabin aboard the Aurora II. What should be an idyllic cruise is actually a secret escape. Entangled in a Chicago insurance fraud engineered by her no-account boyfriend Frank, Hannah is on the run using the alias Vicky Ludlow. Chirpy fellow passenger Renee Epstein takes “Vicky” under her wing, even hectoring grumpy husband Stephen into lending the young woman his travel guide. In short order, the man-child assassin reappears to kill these second Epsteins, the whole thing witnessed by Hannah, who flees the Aurora II. The chase is on in earnest, with Hannah now a fugitive twice over. The book she received from Stephen Epstein contains a priceless formula, written inside the back cover. Stateside, retrieval of the formula is engineered by brash bureaucrat Keyes, who has a Moneypenny-like assistant named Daisy. Imposing scientist Ed Greenwich is waiting for the formula, which has to do with nothing less than pricking a hole in the space-time continuum, and the Keyes team stays ahead in a sub rosa international race for it. But allegiances are a bit fuzzy. Keyes has colleagues with eastern European names, and he doesn’t trust subordinates. But is it because of their loyalty or their competence? Quick cuts take us from Hannah on the run to Keyes at the home office to his operatives Leonard (the man-child assassin) and Dietz, dispatched to get the formula at all costs.
Altman (A Game of Spies, 2002, etc.) keeps his multiple balls in the air with deft economy, some twists, and the right ratio of verbs to adjectives.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-399-15040-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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