Finally, a courtroom drama to rival Presumed Innocent: The scandal-strewn, hugely entertaining story of what happens after a glamorous TV reporter shoots America's most famous writer in his San Francisco hotel room. As soon as the police take Mary Carelli in after her 911 call, she admits killing Mark Ransom but insists she was defending herself against a rapist who was so obsessed with the story of movie-star Laura Chase—who shot herself 20 years ago after a devastating weekend (never before made public) in which Senator James Colt and two friends repeatedly assaulted her—that he could perform sexually only to the accompaniment of an audiotape of that weekend he'd secretly obtained. Now that James Colt, Jr., is running for governor, the D.A.'s office is under pressure to keep that tape under wraps. Meanwhile, another tape of Ransom forces Mary to confront ugly secrets about her own meteoric rise through her testimony 15 years ago against Presidential staffer Jack Woods—testimony that helped Woods's subordinate, rising star Christopher Paget, bring charges of corruption that destroyed both Woods and the President (as detailed in Patterson's first novel, The Lasko Tangent). Predicting the traumatic impact of these revelations on Paget's beloved son Carlo, whom she's never acknowledged as her own, Mary pressures Paget to defend her on the murder charge. When Mary's account of sexual assault begins to unravel, she seems dead in the water—until Paget uncovers evidence that Ransom had a long history of S/M fantasies with his wife, with an actress whose credits are just like Jane Fonda's, and with a New Yorker writer, whom he assaulted in exactly the same circumstances Mary describes. But there are dozens of fireworks, both in and out of the courtroom, left to come. Juicy hints of Washington secrets, agonizing decisions about professional and family loyalties, a backstory that plugs into all your most paranoid fantasies connecting the Kennedys, Marilyn Monroe, and Watergate—and all this on top of a polished tale of courtroom intrigue. Patterson's target audience seems to be everybody who's ever read a book—and most of them will consider it money well-spent. (First printing of 250,000)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-679-42064-9
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1992
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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