A promising debut that will get thriller fans fired up for a sequel.
In Coulson’s thriller, the opportunity of a lifetime may redeem a disgraced trader—if it doesn’t kill him first.
Cal Minor was riding high as a star trader, but his life imploded in a miasma of deceit and debauchery that makes Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street look like Fred Rogers. Now, he’s “belly-up in every way possible,” a mere “blip on the radar.” His ex-wife, Beth, got a half million in alimony and the house in Charleston. He is estranged from his children. And now, “after five years of unreturned phone calls and near-miss reinventions,” he’s on the verge of suicide. A phone call from the Atlas Company, “a staple of global wealth and opportunity,” offers him a new lease on life. Wall Street titan Hank Henleman runs the firm; from Atlas’ management ranks have come congressmen, Nobel Prize winners, and “not less than 10 percent of Forbes 40 under 40 in Finance for the last five years running.” Fans of John Grisham’s work will anticipate that there’s more to this firm (and to Henleman) than meets the eye. Henleman is a corporate villain out of central casting, a “real bull” with a contempt for “human steppingstones.” Minor’s efforts to extricate himself from Henleman’s machinations and those of other shadowy and sinister characters with their own agendas make for an auspicious franchise starter. Coulson was himself a young trader working in London for Goldman Sachs, so he knows this world from the inside and has stories to tell (the “running with the bulls” incident depicted in the book happened in real life, as he shares in the author’s note). Even at his lowest point, Minor is an intriguing figure with a morbid sense of humor; when a hated and obnoxious neighbor interrupts his suicide attempt, Minor dismisses him with, “Randy, the truth is, I am trying to kill myself, and you are putting me decidedly behind schedule.”
A promising debut that will get thriller fans fired up for a sequel.Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9798888242575
Page Count: 262
Publisher: Koehler Books
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
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
A fresh, funny, ambitious, and nuanced take on some of our oldest existential questions. Cannot wait for the TV series.
What would you do if you knew when you were going to die?
In the first page and a half of her latest page-turner, bestselling Australian author Moriarty introduces a large cast of fascinating characters, all seated on a flight to Sydney that’s delayed on the tarmac. There’s the “bespectacled hipster” with his arm in a cast; a very pregnant woman; a young mom with a screaming infant and a sweaty toddler; a bride and groom, still in their wedding clothes; a surly 6-year-old forced to miss a laser-tag party; a darling elderly couple; a chatty tourist pair; several others. No one even notices the woman who will later become a household name as the “Death Lady” until she hops up from her seat and begins to deliver predictions to each of them about the age they’ll be when they die and the cause of their deaths. Age 30, assault, for the hipster. Age 7, drowning, for the baby in arms. Age 43, workplace accident, for a 42-year-old civil engineer. Self-harm, age 28, for the lovely flight attendant, who is that day celebrating her 28th birthday. Over the next 126 chapters (some just a paragraph), you will get to know all these people, and their reactions to the news of their demise, very well. Best of all, you will get to know Cherry Lockwood, the Death Lady, and the life that brought her to this day. Is it true, as she repeatedly intones on the plane, that “fate won’t be fought”? Does this novel support the idea that clairvoyance is real? Does it find a means to logically dismiss the whole thing? Or is it some complex amalgam of these possibilities? Sorry, you won’t find that out here, and in fact not until you’ve turned all 500-plus pages. The story is a brilliant, charming, and invigorating illustration of its closing quote from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (we’re not going to spill that either).
A fresh, funny, ambitious, and nuanced take on some of our oldest existential questions. Cannot wait for the TV series.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9780593798607
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
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