A smart, atmospheric novel with a hole at its core.
A strong-willed, highly seductive female virologist is found dead at a biotech firm's isolated research center in an unnamed place suggestive of Scandinavia. Myles, an investigator with a shadowy government agency, is on the case.
The biotech company's headquarters are in Ondstrand House, a one-time boarding school with a sordid past. The dead woman is Allegra Stans, who during her seven years with the firm seems to have slept with everyone on campus, men and women, before someone broke her neck. Myles—just Myles, don't call him "Agent Myles"—has a smorgasbord of possible suspects to interview, most of them hiding something. As he learns more and more about Allegra's frequently brief sexual adventures and why some people might have it in for her, he slowly uncovers a conspiracy involving synthetic neurotoxins (they have the properties of cobra snake venom) and "adeno-associated viruses." Allegra seems to have discovered something she wasn't supposed to, but what? A stand-alone from the author of Thick as Thieves (2011) and the John March series, the novel is an admirable attempt at melding Agatha Christie and Raymond Chandler, with hints of Nordic noir. But Myles, who narrates, is pretty much a blank slate, a clinical sort with a touch of sarcasm to lighten things but no personal history to speak of aside from the death two years ago of his girlfriend. He has an odd (some might say creepy) fixation on women's looks and smells, picking up "notes of pear and freesia" from one woman's perfume, admiring another woman's teeth that were "bright and even in a generous mouth," and taking notice of a woman's "tight chestnut curls...thick, springy, and anarchic." And there is nothing to suggest any physical presence on his part, so when he suddenly makes like Jack Reacher in a fight scene, you wonder where that came from.
A smart, atmospheric novel with a hole at its core.Pub Date: June 7, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-307-96129-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2022
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
“Nasty little fellows…always get their comeuppance,” a movie character once said. Deeply satisfying.
Following the mysterious disappearance of his wife, a struggling London novelist journeys to a remote Scottish island to try to get his mojo back—but all, of course, is not what it seems.
Grady Green hits the pinnacle of his publishing career on the same night that his life goes off the rails—first his book lands on the New York Times bestseller list, and then his wife, Abby, goes missing on her way home. A year later, Grady is a mere shadow of his former self: out of money and out of ideas. So, when his agent, Abby’s godmother, suggests that he spend some time on the Isle of Amberly, in a log cabin left to her by one of her writers, it seems as good a plan as any. With free housing for himself and his dog and a beautiful, distraction-free environment, maybe he can finally complete the next novel. But from the very beginning, Grady’s experiences with Amberly seem weird, if not downright ominous: As a visitor, he’s not allowed to bring his car onto the island; the local businesses are only open for a few hours at a time; and there are no birds. At all. Not to mention the skeletal hand he finds buried under the floorboards of the cabin, the creepy harmonica music in the woods, and the occasional sighting of a woman in a red coat who’s a dead ringer for Abby. As Grady falls deeper and deeper into insomnia and alcoholism, he begins to realize his being on the island is no accident—and that should make him very afraid. Through occasional chapters from before Abby’s disappearance, told from her point of view, we learn that Grady is not necessarily a reliable narrator, and the book’s slow unfolding of dread, mystery, and then truth is both creative and well-paced. Every chapter heading is an oxymoron, like the title, reminding us of the contradictions at the heart of every story.
“Nasty little fellows…always get their comeuppance,” a movie character once said. Deeply satisfying.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781250337788
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2024
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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