Longhurst’s debut mystery-thriller revolves around a team that protects lottery winners in the United Kingdom.
An oft-quoted proverb/curse, “May you live in interesting times,” may as well be the unofficial motto of Veronica Doyle, the protagonist of Longhurst’s novel. As this twisty tale demonstrates, however, things are rarely so interesting that they can’t get more so. As the story begins, Doyle is living in a poorly maintained London flat and undergoing therapy for her involvement in a bank robbery six months prior. The only success in her life comes from her job as a lottery-winner protection agent for Avalon, the managing firm of the United Kingdom’s national lottery. When a truculent, shady couple becomes her latest clients, a serendipitous real estate opportunity in her home village of Storr Downs allows her to place her clients in a new life while revisiting her old one. Old wounds still hurt, though, and on top of her homecoming issues, Doyle finds the lives of her clients, colleagues and loved ones intersecting in new, unpredictable ways. Told from Doyle’s snarky but wounded viewpoint, Longhurst’s well-modulated plot pushes forward briskly. Some of the transitions between sections are abrupt, and not every plot thread is resolved along the way—Doyle’s brother, whose death as a young man shaped her life in numerous ways, isn’t brought into focus, and the ending scene at his grave doesn’t punctuate the narrative definitively. In addition, some side plots weigh more heavily than their presence warrants, such as the bad blood between Doyle and her former best friend. However, the vivacious characters and highly detailed specifics of English culture and geography provide texture and warmth that overcome the loose plot threads. Between the fully realized setting and complex heroine, Longhurst’s novel adeptly juggles the plot threads into a briskly moving tale that’s one part thriller and two parts family drama.
Pub Date: March 13, 2012
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 414
Publisher: Kurti Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2011
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
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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