Gardner's sixth James Bond novel forgoes the series' customary doomsday scenario and comic-strip villain, reviving 007's old nemesis SMERSH for unadorned spy vs. spy chills. But instead of producing a streamlined thriller, this stripping down only reveals the tiresome, rusted mechanics at the heart of Gardner's Bond incarnation. After a suspenseless prelude depicting Bond whisking away two lovelies from East Germany, Gardner jumps five years ahead to a meeting between Bond and M. There M—in Gardner's hands so thin a character as to deserve his non-name—details 007's new mission: to track down the Eastern bloc agents who have killed and mutilated two members of Cream Cake—a disbanded operation in which five teens born to deep-cover British agents seduced and spyed on top Communist operatives—and to protect the three Cream Cake members still alive, two of whom are the women Bond rescued five years before, the third of whom is male, whereabouts unknown. After obligatory/perfunctory interactions with Moneypenny, May, and the new female Q, Bond rounds up ex-Cream Caker Heather Dare (the usual juicy nubile) in London and flies with her to Dublin, where the two track down female Cream Caker #2. Oddly, Bond beds neither woman (is Gardner trying to signal that Bond, and the 007 series, has lost all virility?). Odder still, Bond positively blunders into capture by crack GRU agent Maj. Max Smolin. And oddest of all, as Bond surveys the living room of the mansion where Smolin takes him for questioning, Gardner unveils what must be one of the strangest character quirks in modern fiction: "Bond was always deeply suspicious of rugs." That senseless observation, symptomatic of a sleepwalking author, presages this novel's one surprise—Smolin turns out to be a British double agent—and a slew of predictable turns, winding up with Bond slaughtering a lot of SMERSHers in Hong Kong and winning the day through little wit or even brawn, but a hefty dose of plain dumb luck. Roger Moore has retired from his Bond involvement; it's time for Gardner, who's now just going through the motions, to do the same.
Pub Date: April 27, 1987
ISBN: 1605983837
Page Count: -
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1987
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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