A frenetic and timely story that illustrates how a house divided cannot stand.
Dimodica (Accidental Evils, 2017) offers a thriller about a growing nationalistic movement in today’s Germany.
The story opens with several European Union officials murdered in Germany, and the country’s intelligence agency says videos taking credit for the assassinations feature an Arabic voice that refers to “the Dar al-Harb, or House of War.” These incidents, combined with German resentment against EU–mandated immigration, seem likely to affect an upcoming national election. Meanwhile, a long-simmering conspiracy is brewing, involving a group of female Nazi descendants called “das Netzwerk,” embodied by a shadowy figure named Gerhardt, who attempts to gain the support of disenchanted Germans. The women of das Netzwerk are conspiring with a Saudi Arabian intelligence agent, Sharif Ali, who’s arranging terrorist activities to inflame the populace. Meanwhile, Terry Solak, an American CIA agent, is working with a German intelligence operative, known only as “Otto,” to investigate the EU killings, and they soon find that cracking this conspiracy involves much more than simply rounding up the usual suspects. This fast-paced thriller’s greatest asset is its feeling of authenticity. Dimodica spent 20 years in Special Forces and military intelligence, and his experience effectively informs his descriptions of the details of Terry’s mission in a strange land. He also makes eminently clear how a lack of communication among the government operatives, police, and military agencies helps the plot to develop as far as it does—an observation that may have come from Dimodica’s own encounters with bureaucracy. The author presents fully developed characters on both sides, resisting the temptation to turn the conspirators into mere cartoons. Especially winning is Terry’s CIA handler, Evie Khazemi, a Muslim woman who’s eager to follow the evidence, wherever it goes. The narrative ratchets up the tension as the specter of Nazism looms over a divided nation, and what results is a chilling cautionary tale about where xenophobia can lead.
A frenetic and timely story that illustrates how a house divided cannot stand.Pub Date: Dec. 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-648-70228-3
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Leschenault Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2019
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
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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