Taut thriller from accomplished attorney-turned-mysterian Patterson (In the Name of Honor, 2010, etc.) set on the familiar turf of Martha’s Vineyard.
There, on that Massachusetts island, Adam Blaine has an uneasy homecoming after ten years of self-imposed exile—or perhaps not self-imposed, since a difficult dad, encrusted with literary fame and exuding the highest of expectations, did his part to drive Adam off. Well, Dad has pitched off a cliff, and Adam, the shadowiest of CIA ops, is back for a funeral that has a hard time coming together, given that the paterfamilias has seemingly disowned his wife and offspring in favor of a glossy mistress. But did he do so? Was his death an accident? Did said Jezebel set up Pops to cash in on the will? And who would want such an entertaining bon vivant dead in the first place? Adam busies himself reconnecting à la Grosse Pointe Blank with old chums and more, most alluring among them one Jenny Leigh, who seems “to carry a separateness, as though creating her own space.” Well, on an island everyone knows everyone’s business, and lines of affinity, elective and otherwise, get very tight and tangled. As he strolls the sands, Adam turns up clues, from a photographic album of Ben Blaine in Southeast Asia way back when to the muffled murmurings of the locals about strange doings under the covers. Patterson carefully works the territory that lies between nostalgia (no one on the island can forget Adam’s big game against Nantucket) and the burning desire to get the heck out of Dodge, layering on plenty of local color without overdoing it. In the end, our super-spy assembles clues enough to convince him that old Ben probably didn’t just slip and tumble off the promontory, but instead was helped along. But by whom? Therein lies the mystery, with a resolution that Patterson skillfully hides until the very end. Seascapes full of red herrings, seaside cottages full of secrets—all good fun, and a most satisfying whodunit.
Pub Date: March 20, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-1705-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2012
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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