An ordinary murder mystery energized by extraordinary, impassioned characters.
In Lipinski’s debut thriller, a young man digs into his late mother’s buried history, but he may have been better off not learning the family secret.
Zane Clearwater, 26, and little sis, Lettie, were lucky they weren’t at their trailer the night their mother, Sherri, died in a fire. Zane is dismayed that he can’t remember that night (he was drunk), but an anonymous text is even more unsettling. “Sherri Clearwater doesn’t exist,” it says, directing him to a story from 30 years ago about the murder of two teens and the prime but ultimately exonerated suspect, ominously named Jeremiah Doom. Zane and Lettie surmise that not onlywasSherri actually Jeremiah’s then-girlfriend, Lily, but Jeremiah is Zane’s father, who Sherri said had died before Zane was born. Father meets son, but there’s trouble ahead for Zane: Jeremiah may be running a meth lab, and cops soon believe Zane killed his mother in addition to another victim or two. Lipinski’s novel begins as a mystery but is less concerned with the siblings’ amateur investigation than with a slow buildup of anxiety and distrust. Zane, for starters, can’t even eliminate himself as the arsonist, and he’s terrified that he may have caused Sherri’s death. And despite Jeremiah’s dubiousness—there’s something off about him carrying a “thick roll of bills”—readers are never completely sure he’s guilty of murder or worse. The same is true for many of the people Zane and Lettie encounter, including Cap, a bar owner who had an affair with Sherri, and Jeremiah’s other sons, Clyde and Link. Delving into Sherri’s past stirs up even more murder, blackmail, and kidnappings. Romance for Zane is, fittingly, murky: he loves dress designer Emmaline, but she doesn’t seem to reciprocate, as she’s more invested in securing her spot on a TV reality show than helping or sympathizing with Zane. Lettie is a merciful bright light in the story; the sibs’ bond is unbreakable, most tellingly expressed when Zane, worried about caring for her, dreams that the two are scouring a trash can for food. By the end, readers will be hooked on the brother-sister team and assorted shady characters to the point that they likely won’t mind the few unanswered questions.
An ordinary murder mystery energized by extraordinary, impassioned characters.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9964676-1-2
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Majestic Content Los Angeles
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2015
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
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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