Lifting a white paper right off a think-tank desk, the authors have applied a bit of imagination and come up with an...
With the conspiracy meter cranked to the max, North and Hamer (American Heroes, 2013, etc.) embroil Jake Kruse, Marine-turned–FBI agent, in the investigation of an unholy alliance between North Korea and Iran.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea—the paranoid Kim dynasty—earns $1 billion a year by smuggling knockoff Rolexes, counterfeit name-brand cigarettes and fake trademarked pharmaceuticals into the United States. After establishing his bona fides in Los Angeles’ Korean gangland, Jake works undercover to stop the deluge of illicit merchandise, an enterprise uneasily controlled by rivals Mssrs. Yeong and Park, both assumed to be North Korean agents. While he’s gathering evidence, Jake is offered a fee to whack Park’s daughter, half the money paid in advance. The bills turn out to be "Supernotes," counterfeit bills so perfect as to be nearly undetectable. Now Jake’s involved in strategic-level spy games, with the North Koreans intending to flood the U.S. with Supernotes to help finance a nuclear weapons project contracted by Iran’s ayatollahs. The fast-moving plot will come off as realistic to anyone following geopolitics; however, Jake’s an action hero taken straight from Column A of the hero menu: a tough guy barely constrained by bureaucratic technicalities, always ready to pull the trigger in spite of a supervisor’s qualms. The remainder of the cast—Koreans, good and bad; other wannabe gangsters; and a sleeper cell of Islamic terrorists—are plugged in when the narrative needs a boost. The writing ranges from the prosaic toward the occasionally bombastic—"the ever-defiant undercover agent, showing no fear." Hoary clichés abound, but the authors bring realism to all things martial, including well-choreographed fight scenes. While there are occasional allusions to "political indigestion" and recent Obama missteps like "Fast and Furious, the IRS Enemies List, and Benghazi," this effort is less Fox-filtered than North’s previous novels.
Lifting a white paper right off a think-tank desk, the authors have applied a bit of imagination and come up with an acceptable action-adventure.Pub Date: June 10, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-1435-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Threshold Editions/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2014
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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