The ambiguous ending may frustrate some readers who like their thrillers neatly wrapped up.
Amidon’s latest suburban thriller explores the nature of class privilege and equal justice under the law.
The tranquility of the wealthy Boston suburb of Emerson is shattered when the body of Eden Perry is found in a home on tony Locust Lane, where the 20-year-old had been staying as a caretaker and dog walker. Police tell her estranged mother, Danielle, they believe she was murdered. The teenagers partying with Eden on the night of her death—golden-boy-with-a-dark-streak Jack Parrish, his sweet but troubled girlfriend, Hannah Holt, and shy outsider Christopher Mahoun, who had a crush on Eden—lie to their parents and the police about where they were that evening. But when scratches are found on Christopher’s neck, he becomes the prime suspect. As a grieving but tough Danielle seeks answers, the other parents take steps to protect their children, even if it comes at the expense of others. The shifting points of view alternate among Celia Parrish, who ignores troubling aspects of her son’s personality while relying on her husband to fix the problems Jack causes; successful restaurateur Michel Mahoun, whose ethnicity (Lebanese Maronite Catholic) marks him as a foreigner in the WASPy community; unhappily married Alice Holt, who is convinced her lover Michel’s son is innocent and who plies Hannah, her stepdaughter, with wine to get at the truth; local man Patrick Noone, on a downward spiral from his daughter Gabi’s fatal overdose, who may have seen the killer on Locust Lane during a late-night drive; and Danielle. Amidon writes smoothly but relies on clichés for his observations on class differences. With her dyed black hair and tattoos, Danielle is a working-class representative, while the socially prominent Parrishes are stereotypes of class entitlement. It’s easy to identify the villains early on. The flipping among perspectives slows the narrative and makes it difficult at times to keep track of the mostly unlikable characters in this plodding thriller.
The ambiguous ending may frustrate some readers who like their thrillers neatly wrapped up.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-250-84423-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 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
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.
A successful Vermont podcaster who’s elicited confessions from dozens of criminals finds herself on the other side of the table, in the hottest of hot seats, over her own troubled past.
Poe Webb was only 13 when she saw her mother, Margaret McMillian, get stabbed to death by the man she’d picked up for a quickie. Poe had vowed revenge, but how could a kid find and avenge herself on a stranger who’d vanished as quickly as he appeared? In the long years since then, Poe’s made a name for herself as a top true-crime podcaster who routinely invites her guests to tell her audience exactly what they did. Now, she’s being pressed, and pressed hard, by Ian Hindley, whose fake name echoes those of England’s Moors Murderers, to join him in a livestream her fans will find riveting because, as Hindley tells her, he’s actually Leopold Hutchins, the pickup who stabbed her mother 14 times when she failed to use her safe word. Skeptical? Hindley knows endless details about the killing that were never released by the police. If Poe won’t do the broadcast, Hindley threatens to harm everyone she loves: her father; her producer and lover, Kip Nguyen; and her black Lab, Bailey. And there’s one more complication that makes the pressure on Poe even more unbearable. Seven years ago, against all odds, she succeeded in tracking Leopold Hutchins from Burlington to New York and killing him herself. In fact, it’s that murder that Hindley most wants her to talk about. Which bully is more fearsome, the man who’s threatening her or the man she killed?
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781464226229
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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