A deadly and exhilarating game of cat and mouse that has all the makings of an engaging series about fighting terrorists.
Homeland Security agents rush to prevent large-scale cyberwarfare in this thriller.
Think of it as a version of 24. There may be no literal time bombs to defuse, but the countdown is on anyway to stop an online worm labeled Chrysalide from growing wings. Given that it has already forced the shutdown of Los Angeles’ water system and that the Islamic Crusade, a potent terrorist group with connections to Saudi royalty, has given the U.S. two days to pull troops out of Muslim countries or else, time is of the essence. Enter Mahaz Al-Dossari, an exceptionally skilled computer network security specialist and a full professor at UCLA. Could he be the story’s Jack Bauer and save the day? Or will that honor go to another tech expert, Ken Oakey, who is working closely with the feds? Ken recognizes the high stakes (“Criminals, Ken likes to say, only have to get it right once in a while. White hats like Ken have to get it right one hundred percent of the time. That’s twenty-four hours a day, holidays included”). Mahaz has problems brewing on the homefront as well: due to his own roving eye, his marriage of 18 years to the lovely and long-suffering Juliana is in trouble. Juliana, for her part, spends most of her time ferrying their 17-year-old son, Omar, in and out of the hospital due to hydrocephalus, a damaging brain condition. Their teen daughter, Leila, is caught up in her own world, and Juliana worries that her husband will use their two children as pawns if she files for divorce. Lipinski’s (Bloodlines, 2015) crisp writing style expertly sets up suspense along multiple parallel fronts: there’s the cyberattack, of course, and readers also become invested in the fates of all the characters, including the members of the Al-Dossari family. The tale’s strengths include the realistic portrayals of the players, particularly the teens. The identity of the cybervillain, simply referred to as G0d_of_Internet, becomes apparent early on, while the novel’s intense pace comes at a cost: the culprit’s path to terrorism remains underexplored. Nevertheless, Lipinski has an impressive command of her plotlines, and the story barrels along at a fast clip to its somewhat preordained but enjoyable conclusion.
A deadly and exhilarating game of cat and mouse that has all the makings of an engaging series about fighting terrorists.Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2016
ISBN: 9780996467629
Page Count: 245
Publisher: Majestic Content Los Angeles
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
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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