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FADE TO BLACK

Feverishly frothy tale of an actress living incognito, menaced by a shadowy stalker. It’s been five years since Mallory Eden, that “perky, pretty, girl-next-door” starlet everybody loved, supposedly jumped off a Montana cliff into the turbulent Rock River. Her body was never found, but a suicide note in her Lexus implies that she was unhinged by an unidentified stalker who not only sent her threatening letters, but killed her secretary and then shot Eden in the womb so she could never conceive. While the Hollywood infotainment world mourns, a somewhat fleshier Eden is silently fighting baby cravings and nightmares in the unremarkable Rhode Island hamlet of Windemere Cove. Pretending to be freelance writer Elizabeth Baxter (who never seems to read or write), Eden, whose pre-Hollywood name was Cindy O’Neal, gets an ominous, anonymous letter in the mail one day from someone who purports to know who she is. Baxter-Eden-O’Neal thinks she faked her suicide perfectly, but her past, revealed through distractingly shrill flashbacks, has enough unresolved conflicts (her sleazy boyfriend has become a coveted guest on daytime talk shows), family trauma (she was abandoned as a child by her drug-addicted mother), and trashy secrets (she made her debut in a porno flick) to fill a Jacqueline Susann novel. While our heroine tries to guess who the stalker is (the kindly but strangely familiar locksmith, or her nosey policeman neighbor?), a host of skeletons, including her long-lost mother, stumble out of the closet to claim her for vile and shameless purposes. Shiny with Tinseltown sleaze, this first solo hardcover from Staub plays its tabloid terrors and tacky soap opera clichÇs deathlessly straight. The result is funny when it shouldn’t be, silly and affected the rest of the time. A hissy catfight during the cliff-hanging finale is a hoot, but not worth the campy climb to get there.

Pub Date: May 1, 1998

ISBN: 1-57566-285-X

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Kensington

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1998

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DEVOLUTION

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

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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

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THE SILENT PATIENT

Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.

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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

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