An engaging tale highlighting the tensions of diplomatic immunity and introducing a surprisingly endearing hero.
In this thriller, a British soldier–turned-operative finds his world upended when his nephew is killed by a CIA agent’s wife, who flees to escape the consequences.
This series opener begins with two crosscutting events: British secret agent Toby Miller takes out a bomb maker in an unnamed country, and Madyson Lutz, distracted and driving on the wrong side of the road, runs over a teen cyclist. The accident happens near the British base where Madyson’s CIA agent husband has been working. The fates of these characters soon intertwine since the cyclist, who dies from his injuries, is Toby’s nephew. Madyson’s husband hustles his wife back to the United States, angry that she has messed up his career but claiming diplomatic immunity for the incident. Toby is told the news by his bosses, ordered to take a break at his former British army barracks, and watched regarding his mental state and potential for vigilantism (“Miller’s a bloody potent weapon, Her Majesty’s Armed Forces saw to that, and now we’ve given him more training, more responsibility, more deadly skills. He’s capable of a lot”). Lucy Bell, the policewoman who arrived at the accident scene, is part of the team sent to interview Madyson, although officials imply that extradition is unlikely. Once this proves to be the case, Toby, whose sister and brother-in-law are suffering greatly from grief, travels to the U.S. to kill Madyson. But the situation turns out to be not at all what Toby expects. Green’s thriller has an intriguing inciting incident, prompting its core characters to create and rally around a “4DC,” or For Diplomatic Change, movement. The book’s midsection gets bogged down a bit with conversations among various officials who are ultimately minor characters. But overall, the story is a well-paced page-turner driving readers to its dramatic meeting between Toby and Madyson. Toby is also an appealing series protagonist, with his tough-guy persona leavened by both humorous and emotional interactions with family and others.
An engaging tale highlighting the tensions of diplomatic immunity and introducing a surprisingly endearing hero.Pub Date: June 25, 2022
ISBN: 9798837056529
Page Count: 389
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
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
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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