Action-loving readers will be thrilled with this one. Laukkanen is a damn fine storyteller.
The author of the Stevens and Windermere novels (The Forgotten Girls, 2017, etc.) taps into his nautical knowledge for this rousing seafaring yarn.
In Yokohama, Tomio Ishimaru sneaks onto the cargo ship Pacific Lion with a silver briefcase containing $50 million worth of bearer bonds he’s stealing from the yakuza crime syndicate. On its way to the United States, the ship changes out its seawater ballast incorrectly and begins to list to one side. Soon it founders and might even sink. Everyone except the stowaway abandons ship and its cargo of 5,000 Nissans 200 miles off the coast of Alaska. The ship desperately needs a tow, so several salvage tugs race to the scene, including Gale Force. McKenna Rhodes inherited the tug from her father after he was killed in an accident at sea. Now she and her crew head out to right the crippled ship and tow it to safety, her first salvage job on her own. The stakes are high—the Pacific Lion’s owner agrees to pay Rhodes $30 million if they haul it safely into port, “but the crew wouldn’t be paid one salty dime if they couldn’t save the ship.” It’s an unusual story premise, and a good one—quick, name the last tugboat thriller you’ve read. The crew respects Rhodes as “a damn fine salvage captain” in an overwhelmingly male profession. Smart, brave, and worried, she knows how to command her crew and guide the tug through towering crests and swells. In the midst of all this, the crew must board the damaged ship and pump water back in to right it before beginning to tow. The beleaguered vessel may well take some Gale Force crew to the bottom of the sea. Belowdecks, Ishimaru hides with a treasure and a pistol, setting up an inevitable confrontation. Someone will get rich, and someone will die.
Action-loving readers will be thrilled with this one. Laukkanen is a damn fine storyteller.Pub Date: May 8, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7352-1263-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
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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