CIA super-agent Blackford Oakes spies around Berlin, just before the Wall goes up—in the most somber, least witty or inventive of Buckley's Cold War thrillers thus far. "Find out what Khrushchev actually plans to do." That's Blackford's latest mission, as East Germany's Walter Ulbricht keeps pressuring Moscow for help in stopping the population flow from East to West Berlin. So Blackford makes contact with legendary Henri Tod, the young leader of a private anti-Communist spy network in Germany: he's charismatic, daring, a German-Jewish survivor of the Holocaust (who blames himself for the death-camp demise of his beloved sister Clementa). And Tod seems to know more than anyone else about the possibility of East German/Soviet action in Berlin—especially when, after being wounded during a murder-mission to East Berlin, he just happens to wind up in the tender care of Waiter Ulbricht's feckless, charming, rebellious nephew! Soon, then, back in West Berlin, Tod is getting the inside dope on the forthcoming Wall plan. Unfortunately, however, the JFK White House is unwilling to use this data as the basis for firm Berlin counter-measures. (Buckley is at his most grindingly ideological here, even reprinting a National Review editorial.) Thus, finally, Tod and his small underground group are forced to go it alone against the Wall construction—in a near-kamikaze tank operation. And though Tod survives this futile raid (the Wall goes up as planned, of course), he is doomed nonetheless—when the East Germans come up with a scheme to trap him into a reunion with his long-lost sister: she isn't dead, as it happens, but survived the war. . . and is now the much-brainwashed wife of a KGB officer! Buckley's usual flair for comic political history is in sadly short supply this time; the chief attempt at humor comes in interior monologues for JFK (flaky, sarcastic)—which fall flat. And, with the excessively noble Henri Tod at center-stage most of the way through, Blackford is barely a presence here at all (though clearly chagrined by Washington's lack of anti-Communist guts). Over-contrived, insufficiently charming, and blandly didactic: the weakest of the Oakes adventures—but short and fast enough to please the sizable following.
Pub Date: Jan. 27, 1983
ISBN: 1581824785
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1983
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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