King strikes another vein of modern noir gold in this technology tale.
King’s (The Traveling Man, 2015) latest thriller picks up the trail of his married con artists as they descend on a software company.
Samantha Bartel is the assistant director of new development for Leapfrog Technologies in Cloverdale. Middle-aged, unmarried, and resentful of her superiors at Leapfrog who have benefited from her work, Sam plans sabotage. Enter the Traveling Man and his wife, this time using the names Joe and Tess Campbell. After surviving their previous con in Seanboro, this ruthless, manipulative couple once again hopes to fleece a deserving mark. Sam reveals that her company is about to roll out a data-mining program called Lilypad 5. For $100,000—half up front—she hires the Campbells to help steal the program and destroy the server holding it. While Leapfrog reels from the “accident,” Sam plans to sell Lilypad 5 to one of her firm’s competitors. Personal lives, however, tend to skew even the best-laid scams. Ronnie Franklin, Leapfrog’s director of new development, and Leroy Smalls, the company’s security chief, need piles of cash for private reasons. Once an initial double cross threatens to implode Leapfrog, the Campbells must stay ahead of the mayhem if they want to get paid. King returns in fine form with his devious creations in tow. Fascinating as the Campbells are, however, Sam, Ronnie, and Leroy vie for the reader’s sympathy in remarkable ways. When lovelorn Sam dines with a potential mate named Reuben, she wonders whether her life with him “would be just as empty as it was now, only with twice the laundry and cleaning?” King hints at the potential for psychological trauma from the lives his protagonists lead when Tess declares, “I don't have PTSD. I’m completely over what happened in Seanboro.” The violence here, though brief, is unexpected and staggeringly brutal; the repercussions electrify the narrative. King leaves his audience clamoring for more seedy, smart adventures, with perhaps a bit more damage accrued to Mr. and Mrs. Traveling Man.
King strikes another vein of modern noir gold in this technology tale.Pub Date: March 22, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 181
Publisher: Blurred Lines Press
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
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
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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