An engaging romantic mystery.
A man with partial memory loss joins the Drug Enforcement Administration in taking down narcos while searching for the mysterious woman he loves in this debut thriller.
New Yorker Juan Del Valle has a potential investor for his sports-related “business idea.” Before he has a chance to present his concept, Juan meets a beautiful woman at a New Jersey mall. Though his dalliances have earned him the nickname Don Juan, he’s smitten with her on an emotional level. Revisiting the mall until finally seeing her again, he learns her name is Angie Hope. She’s married to a cheating, abusive husband who threatens to take away their son if she ever leaves him. Juan and Angie grow close but initially maintain a physical distance, communicating via text. But soon they both want more than the poetry Juan sends her. Unfortunately, Juan’s possible investor, Don Emilio Ramirez, is under DEA investigation. Juan’s eventual meeting with him goes unexpectedly sour, leaving the protagonist hurt and in a two-month coma. Upon awakening, Juan can’t recall the details leading up to his injury. DEA Special Agent Jessie Pichardo, who has investigated Ramirez, recruits Juan, a former Marine, to convince women to turn against their narco husbands or boyfriends. This, of course, requires going undercover for the purpose of seduction, which Juan is familiar with. But after perusing his text messages, he realizes Angie is the love of his life. Since she’s likely tied to a noted cartel member, other cartels may have targeted her. Juan hopes to track down Angie while Jessie suspects someone has “compromised” the DEA.
In this series opener, Geronimo establishes an appealing romance between Juan and Angie. There’s minimal information regarding the abuse she suffers—narrator Juan implies he’s intentionally avoiding the subject—but the couple’s mutual attraction is convincing. Much of their story entails Juan’s poems, both in the narrative and in texts to Angie. While the poetry is sometimes clichéd and repetitive, it’s more often indelible: “I don’t even need to touch you to swerve you into my light.” Juan is a winning protagonist. He has understandable contempt for Angie’s husband, whom he doesn’t know, but Juan acknowledges that his own prior treatment of women was insensitive. Things get more intense as Juan and Angie move toward a physical connection. Not only is Juan anxious over the probability of sex with Angie, but he becomes paranoid as well, sure that her rich husband has someone spying on him. The book’s final third becomes a full-scale thriller. Juan is on a mission and running out of time, and he enlists the help of Matthew, a fellow soldier and cybersecurity specialist who offers his hacking skills to the DEA. Sadly, the story practically sprints to the end, quickly pushing past the operation and summarizing a violent turn with surprising ease. This could be an avenue to explore in the sequel. Geronimo’s digital illustrations add color to the pages as well as mystery, occasionally involving individuals or scenes that readers won’t immediately recognize. A few of these remain unknown by the ending, which teases the second installment.
An engaging romantic mystery. (dedications, acknowledgements, author bio)Pub Date: July 27, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-09-830465-2
Page Count: 162
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2020
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
"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.
Many years after her older brother, Bear, went missing, Barbara Van Laar vanishes from the same sleepaway camp he did, leading to dark, bitter truths about her wealthy family.
One morning in 1975 at Camp Emerson—an Adirondacks summer camp owned by her family—it's discovered that 13-year-old Barbara isn't in her bed. A problem case whose unhappily married parents disdain her goth appearance and "stormy" temperament, Barbara is secretly known by one bunkmate to have slipped out every night after bedtime. But no one has a clue where's she permanently disappeared to, firing speculation that she was taken by a local serial killer known as Slitter. As Jacob Sluiter, he was convicted of 11 murders in the 1960s and recently broke out of prison. He's the one, people say, who should have been prosecuted for Bear's abduction, not a gardener who was framed. Leave it to the young and unproven assistant investigator, Judy Luptack, to press forward in uncovering the truth, unswayed by her bullying father and male colleagues who question whether women are "cut out for this work." An unsavory group portrait of the Van Laars emerges in which the children's father cruelly abuses their submissive mother, who is so traumatized by the loss of Bear—and the possible role she played in it—that she has no love left for her daughter. Picking up on the themes of families in search of themselves she explored in Long Bright River (2020), Moore draws sympathy to characters who have been subjected to spousal, parental, psychological, and physical abuse. As rich in background detail and secondary mysteries as it is, this ever-expansive, intricate, emotionally engaging novel never seems overplotted. Every piece falls skillfully into place and every character, major and minor, leaves an imprint.
"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.Pub Date: July 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780593418918
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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