Excellent writing and a clever plot make this one stand out.
Irish author Banville brings back characters he originally wrote about under the name Benjamin Black.
Banville’s latest 1950s-set crime novel opens with Denton Wymes, a recluse who lives in a caravan in rural Ireland with his dog, stumbling upon an unusual sight: a Mercedes SL idling in a field, its headlamps on and no driver in sight. A man named Armitage accosts Wymes, saying that his wife, who had been driving the car, has gone missing and may have “drowned herself.” Wymes is suspicious of Armitage, whose affect seems off: “It seemed a piece of bad acting, but then, Wymes told himself, that’s mostly how people behave when there’s a crisis and they’re distraught.” DI St John Strafford arrives from Dublin to investigate, quickly sussing out that nothing about the case will be straightforward—Armitage is slippery and unpredictable, Wymes is a convicted child molester, and something seems amiss about the couple whose rental house Armitage and Wymes went to for help. Meanwhile, Strafford has his own problems: His separated wife wants a divorce, and his lover—who happens to be the daughter of his pathologist colleague, Quirke—is pregnant. And when two bodies are discovered, he is faced with an increasing sense of urgency. Strafford and Quirke return as characters from Banville’s previous crime novels, and Armitage played a large role in his most recent book, The Lock-Up (2023). These are compelling people: Strafford with his emotional unavailability (“The fact was, he did not understand himself, or Phoebe, or anyone. The vagaries of the human heart baffled him”) and Quirke with his brooding depression (“He stayed away from people as much as possible. This was a loneliness company couldn’t cure”). As for the mystery at the heart of the book: Banville remains a master of suspense; it’s not easy to stop turning the pages until the novel’s genuinely surprising end. This is yet another fine thriller from an author at the top of his game.
Excellent writing and a clever plot make this one stand out.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9781335000590
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.
What hasn’t legendary legal eagle Grisham tried yet? How about a thriller about serial kidnapping and international terrorism.
When Paul and Chelsea Tanner disappear during a day trip on their Paris honeymoon, their abductors demand a ransom of $2 million from Chelsea’s wealthy parents, and a few days later the same sum from Paul’s much less well-heeled parents. After orthopedist Lowell Clayburn, Chelsea’s father, ponies up the ransom without breathing a word to the authorities, his daughter is promptly released. But even though Paul’s parents sell their home, liquidate their assets, and borrow money from the Clayburns to meet the kidnappers’ demands, the villains hold on to Paul anyway. Asked whether he’s ever seen such an outcome in a double kidnapping, FBI deputy director Andrew Strong tells Lowell: “No, this is a new one.” But it’s not, as Strong knows all too well; it’s the third such active case, all involving honeymooning couples whose bridegrooms had served in the armed forces. After masterfully drawing readers in with his bare-knuckle account of the Tanners’ abduction and the attempt by their families and the CIA to tell the lies required to keep caring friends and the rapacious press at bay, Grisham effortlessly switches gears to follow CIA agent Rae Claire Russo and Stuart Nash, a former Department of Justice prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay who agrees to marry her so they can serve as bait for the kidnappers, whose motives include justice and revenge as well as cold hard cash. So much for the imprisoned Paul’s wistful reflection that “hopefully, it was only about money.”
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9780385550543
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2026
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
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