A well-paced thriller that engagingly tangles its hero’s personal and professional lives.
Murder, meth, and matrimonial discord bedevil a former Texas Ranger in Jimerson’s second series mystery, following White Gold (2022).
Fifty-something E.J. Kane, a former Texas Ranger and now head of security for Devekon Energy, has an arthritic knee, a stressful job, and a damaged family life. The death of his son, Konner, a Marine who died while deployed “half a world away,” marked the beginning of the unraveling of E.J.’s “quilt of a perfect family.” He and his wife, powerful trial lawyer Rebecca Johnson, divorced after the tragedy. E.J. also rescued their daughter, Sharla, a meth addict, after she was abducted and raped by sex traffickers; she now struggles with whether to get an abortion. Because of his difficult family situation, E.J. identifies with the Blakes, whose daughter, Melinda, was murdered a year ago. Crooked Sheriff Benjamin “B.B.” Berryhill can’t be bothered with the Blakes’ unsolved case, but B.B.’s son, a police detective, vows to help, as does E.J. Meanwhile, E.J. is consumed by the fact that Aryan Triangle member and murderer G.H. Burton has been released from prison; his conviction—hard fought by Rebecca—was overturned. This character-driven novel is just as much a tale of family troubles as it is a mystery. A familiar story of meth addiction affectingly spills across the pages, as does the pain of a divorce that one side doesn’t want, in addition to problems of aging. The book’s initial fast pace establishes E.J.’s gruff but helpful character, but he also questions if he’s a lawman who’s outlived his era. The dialogue stays sharp, and descriptions can be strong (“He carried her like a sack of feed swinging wildly”). One flaw is that so much of the story relies on readers knowing what happened in the previous book in the series—or at least requires Jimerson to recap those events. But the author, a Texas attorney, has the real-life experience to back up his storyline, and he gets bonus points for referencing Chuck Norris.
A well-paced thriller that engagingly tangles its hero’s personal and professional lives.Pub Date: June 11, 2024
ISBN: 9798218409852
Page Count: 310
Publisher: Elwood Jimerson Farms
Review Posted Online: April 22, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
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
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.
A successful Vermont podcaster who’s elicited confessions from dozens of criminals finds herself on the other side of the table, in the hottest of hot seats, over her own troubled past.
Poe Webb was only 13 when she saw her mother, Margaret McMillian, get stabbed to death by the man she’d picked up for a quickie. Poe had vowed revenge, but how could a kid find and avenge herself on a stranger who’d vanished as quickly as he appeared? In the long years since then, Poe’s made a name for herself as a top true-crime podcaster who routinely invites her guests to tell her audience exactly what they did. Now, she’s being pressed, and pressed hard, by Ian Hindley, whose fake name echoes those of England’s Moors Murderers, to join him in a livestream her fans will find riveting because, as Hindley tells her, he’s actually Leopold Hutchins, the pickup who stabbed her mother 14 times when she failed to use her safe word. Skeptical? Hindley knows endless details about the killing that were never released by the police. If Poe won’t do the broadcast, Hindley threatens to harm everyone she loves: her father; her producer and lover, Kip Nguyen; and her black Lab, Bailey. And there’s one more complication that makes the pressure on Poe even more unbearable. Seven years ago, against all odds, she succeeded in tracking Leopold Hutchins from Burlington to New York and killing him herself. In fact, it’s that murder that Hindley most wants her to talk about. Which bully is more fearsome, the man who’s threatening her or the man she killed?
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781464226229
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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