An engaging, chatty, and meandering tale about the ways people make sense of the world.
A TV reporter tries to track down one of America’s greatest hoaxes in this comic novel.
Cooperstown, New York, 2003. The Cardiff Giant has been a local oddity of upstate New York ever since it was unearthed from a farmer’s field in 1869. Though the 10-foot-tall petrified man was quickly discovered to be a hoax, it remains a popular attraction at Cooperstown’s Farmers’ Museum—at least until it mysteriously vanishes. As part of his new position as a reporter for the Discovery Channel, Jack Thrasher is sent to investigate the disappearance, and he’s making a point to leave his skepticism at the door. “Enlightenment was bad for ratings,” explains Jack. “Let the ordinariness of life give way to the extraordinary, the marvelous—the paranormal!” In that spirit, he’s dutifully recording all the out-there theories of the locals, even when they propose that the giant came back to life or was abducted by aliens. But as Jack settles into the village, he soon begins to realize that the giant is hardly the weirdest thing about Cooperstown, a place replete with cabalists, astrologers, devotees of plant spirit medicine, and even a ravioli bearing an incredible resemblance to Mel Gibson. Can Jack get to the bottom of this disappearance without diving headfirst into the realm of the absurd? Lockridge’s prose is humorous and rich with detail, particularly regarding the history of the town and its oddities. At one point, Jack relates: “I got locked into the Baseball Hall of Fame after hours. I’d fallen asleep in the men’s room at closing. I was so battered, poisoned, and bitten since arriving in Cooperstown—and pumped so full of antibiotics, emetics, valium, and anti-inflammatories—that I wasn’t steady on my feet and was prone to narcosis.” The text is accompanied by stylish, black-and-white illustrations by Scanlon (who also provides the striking cover art). The plot unfolds at a leisurely pace, and there is a lot more banter than there are dramatic incidents or moments of high tension. The author is ultimately most interested in investigating the strange beliefs that animate people. Those who are similarly curious will find much to enjoy here.
An engaging, chatty, and meandering tale about the ways people make sense of the world.Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-77180-424-0
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Iguana Books
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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