Less The Da Vinci Code than American Treasure. Think of Nicolas Cage tearing up the scenery as Tom Sagan to the background...
Was Columbus Jewish? The answer may matter a lot more than you think.
Five hundred years after his fourth and last voyage to the New World, the Admiral of the Ocean Sea is back in the news again, and wealthy Austrian Jew Zachariah Simon and Jamaican crime lord Béne Rowe have taken notice. Convinced that Columbus, of whose life nearly nothing is known for certain, took to his grave the secret location of a gold mine in Jamaica, they team up, at least briefly, to put pressure on disgraced ex-journalist Tom Sagan to tell them what he knows. And since Tom, who’s fallen into depression since a questionable Mideast news story forced him to return his Pulitzer and condemned him to life as a ghostwriter, is about to kill himself, he’s going to need special motivation. This Simon supplies in the form of a live video of Sagan’s estranged daughter, Alle Becket, groped by mercenaries as she writhes bound and gagged on a bed. Tom’s not to know that Alle, still seething with hatred for the father who neglected her, has helped stage her videotaped victimization. Also in the hunt are Brian Jamison, who says he’s an American intelligence officer from something called the Magellan Billet; Frank Clarke, of the Charles Town Council of Elders; and the 102-year-old Rabbi Berlinger, of Prague’s Old-New Synagogue, who’s convinced that the apostate Tom is the latest Levite. This being a Berry production (The Emperor’s Tomb, 2010, etc.), every alliance is of course fragile, and the bonds among even the heartiest teammates are up for grabs. So is the ultimate goal, for the author gradually reveals that Columbus’ lost gold mine is only chicken feed compared to the real bonanza at stake.
Less The Da Vinci Code than American Treasure. Think of Nicolas Cage tearing up the scenery as Tom Sagan to the background beat of popping corn, and you’re halfway there.Pub Date: May 15, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-345-52651-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 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
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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