An often captivating story of three friends on opposing sides of a betrayal.
Bond (Assassins, 2016, etc.) tells the story of three friends who become divided over an unexpected temptation in this thriller.
Former NFL linebacker–turned–TV talking head Zack Wilson has plenty of problems in his life, from chronic injuries to gambling debts. So he relishes the 10 days per year that he spends hunting in the mountains of Montana with Steve, his stockbroker, and Curt, their Cheyenne guide. This year, however, he finds it difficult to forget his problems back in the real world, particularly after he makes a discovery in the woods: “A crashed plane lay on one crushed wing, nose buried in the snow, the other wing raised toward the sky as if in supplication, the propeller twisted and the tail torn half off.” More surprising still is that the abandoned aircraft contains two coffins, each loaded with kilos upon kilos of cocaine. Zack shares this discovery with Steve, who immediately suggests that they sell it and make a quick fortune—particularly because Steve just lost both men’s fortunes in the stock market. Instead of cutting Curt in on the deal, Zack and Steve steal the cocaine and their guide’s truck, determined to sell the drugs, even if they can’t quite decide on the best buyer. They soon have all manner of pursuers on their tail, from sheriffs to Drug Enforcement Administration agents to a deadly operative of the cartel to whom the cocaine belongs. Most significantly, they’re pursued by Curt, the good man they wronged, who seeks only to save his erstwhile friends from themselves. Bond tells his story in a crisp, propulsive prose that darts from sentence to sentence like the trained eyes of a hunter: “When they reached camp he saw with sudden fury that the corral had been broken down and his four other horses had vanished down the trail toward the highway. Grizzly tracks wandered the trampled snow.” He also has a sharp ear for dialogue and a knack for character development, at least when it comes to his main characters. Each of the three men, as Bond depicts them, is a spinning cyclone of motivations. Despite their familiar archetypes, Zack and Steve are complex and relatable, recast by new revelations as the story unspools. Curt is a simpler type of hero who provides a good contrast to the other two, although his portrayal seems to lean heavily on the stereotype of Native Americans being closely in tune with the land. Some of the other characters feel superfluous, however, stealing page time away from the main trio and crowding this relatively slim story. Themes of the destructiveness of greed, both private and corporate; the sacredness of nature; and the primeval ways of mankind lend weight to what would otherwise be a straightforward thriller. The plot doesn’t go anywhere too surprising, and the ending is perhaps disappointingly predictable. But overall, Bond has created a well-paced tale with intricate storylines that should satisfy fans of the genre.
An often captivating story of three friends on opposing sides of a betrayal.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 262
Publisher: Mandevilla Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2017
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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