From voir dire to verdict, the reader can whistle right along.
A standard legal thriller padded nearly to epic extent, this about a young man who stands trial for the bombing of an abortion clinic in.
Sloan’s breezy, banal prose recalls the question Noel Coward allegedly asked Edna Ferber: Do you whistle while you write? But, like Ferber, Sloan (An Isolated Incident, 1998, etc.) can hook a reader despite pedestrian writing. She lands her bait when she brings on Corey Dean Latham. Latham is the only suspect Seattle police can arrest for destroying the Family Services Center and leaving nearly 200 dead. But no way, attorney Dana McAuliffe thinks, did the young, clean-shaven, blue-eyed naval officer from Iowa do it. Not even if he was steamed when his wife aborted their child without telling him. McAuliffe takes his case. Onto the scene come Larry King, Dan Rather, Barbara Walters (interviewing the boy’s parents), pro-lifers, anti-abortionists, a panel of jurors, survivors of the bombing, two presidential candidates, assorted family members, and two homeless men. A keen attorney, Dana pretty much sails through the rather uncomplicated trial. But out-of-court events threaten Dana and her case. Someone from McAullife’s prestigious law firm may be tampering with the jurors. With Latham conveniently incarcerated, his wife is getting cozy with an old flame. And a sleazy tabloid reporter is seducing Dana’s needy friend Judith for the dirt on Dana. He learns that when Dana was in line for a major promotion at her firm, she, too, aborted a child and didn’t tell her husband. The story breaks and Dana’s husband leaves her. Summing up the explosive issues of the case for the jury, Dana makes the understated observation that there are two sides to the story. A somewhat surprising coda underscores her point.
From voir dire to verdict, the reader can whistle right along.Pub Date: April 10, 2002
ISBN: 0-446-52451-4
Page Count: 530
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2002
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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