Neither Edward’s existential struggle nor the tracking of the robbers are suspenseful enough to keep our interest.
Dad is a serial killer. Can his son avoid the same fate? That’s the question posed by New Zealander Cleave in his exceptionally gory fourth novel (Cemetery Lake, 2009, etc.).
When Edward Hunter was nine, he killed a neighbor’s dog, feeding it a steak embedded with nails. One thing led to another, and in short order his father Jack was charged with the murders of 11 prostitutes. After his life sentence, Edward’s mother committed suicide and his big sister overdosed on heroin. That was 20 years ago. Now Edward is an accountant, a model citizen devoted to wife Jodie and six-year-old daughter Sam. He and Jodie are at the bank when it’s held up by six armed robbers. This happens in Christchurch, New Zealand, during Christmas Week, the season of goodwill; if you missed the irony, don’t worry, you’ll get constant reminders. Edward confronts the robbers, verbally, and Jodie is shot dead. Edward emotes too much for the protagonist of an action story, but then an inner voice kicks in, the same voice he heard as a child dog-killer. He visits Jack in prison; father tells son that he heard the same voice each time he killed, that it wants blood, that they’re both “blood men.” Go ahead, says Jack; listen to the voice; avenge Jodie. To get him started, he gives his boy one of the robbers’ names. Edward goes to work, the cops always one step behind. He’ll cause several gruesome deaths, some in self-defense; his daughter Sam will be kidnapped; he’ll spring his old man, who’ll make up for lost time by resuming his own killing spree. Cleave’s assembly-line prose, with its American veneer, becomes numbing; characterization is minimal; there’s blood everywhere. The author has some tricks up his sleeve at the end, but they will antagonize the few readers left in his corner.
Neither Edward’s existential struggle nor the tracking of the robbers are suspenseful enough to keep our interest.Pub Date: July 20, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4391-8961-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2010
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
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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