Both complex and compelling, a nightmare-inducing parable about our own wickedness.
The myth of the poisoned apple belies the very real evil growing in a Pennsylvania orchard.
If Wendig’s latest is less paranoia-inducing than his techno-themed thrillers, it’s just as squelchy, made more so by the primeval nature of the antagonist. In Harrow, Pennsylvania, Dan Paxson is trying to raise his daughter, Calla, with good intentions, but he’s also a man with a chip on his shoulder. Little Dan, as he’s known to the members of the Crossed Keys, a nasty little social club, is determined to rescue his dead father’s legacy by resurrecting the family apple orchard and growing a singular, invasive species Calla dubs the Ruby Slipper. While Dan is already counting his future fortunes, we get to know Calla, 17-year-old burgeoning internet influencer, and her jock boyfriend, Marco, as well as plenty of other townsfolk. Among them are ultra-controlling lawyer Meg and her do-gooder wife, Emily, as well as Joanie and husband, Graham, whose S&M–themed Airbnb has rankled the locals. There are plenty of hints that something is amiss with Dan’s apple, but as he begins selling it at local farmers markets, it begins to change the people who eat it, making them stronger, more formidable, and meaner. Into this mix stumbles easily the oddest and most likable outlier, John Compass, a modern-day combination of trained soldier, newly minted Quaker, and Johnny Appleseed, who's looking for a friend who went missing while searching for a long-rumored Dutch varietal. On the other end is Edward Naberius, a mysterious, white-cloaked “restorer of lost dignities,” who is clearly more than he seems as well. Wendig writes doorstoppers, but it’s safe to say there’s something for everyone here, from the creepy Eyes Wide Shut vibe (complete with sacrificial rituals) to the Stephen King–laced dichotomy between the world’s everyday cruelty and the truly grotesque carnage that follows.
Both complex and compelling, a nightmare-inducing parable about our own wickedness.Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780593158746
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2023
As usual, Evanovich handles the funny stuff better (much better) than the mystery stuff.
Stephanie Plum’s 31st adventure shows that Trenton’s preeminent fugitive-apprehension agent still has plenty of tricks up her sleeve, and needs every one of them.
The current caseload for Stephanie and Lula—the ex-prostitute file clerk at her cousin Vincent Plum’s bail bonds company, who serves as her unflappable sidekick—begins with two “failures to appear.” Eugene Fleck is suspected of being Robin Hoodie, who robs from the rich and, yes, distributes the proceeds to the poor. Racketeer Bruno Jug, who’s missed his court date on charges of tax evasion, is also suspected of drugging and raping a 14-year-old. But neither of these fugitives can hold a candle to Zoran Djordjevic, aka Fang, a self-proclaimed vampire wanted in connection with the gruesome fate of his late wife and three other missing women. As usual, Stephanie’s personal life is just as helter-skelter as her professional life as a bounty hunter. She’s managed to get herself engaged both to Det. Joe Morelli, of the Trenton PD, and Ranger, a former Special Forces agent who runs a private security firm; she thinks she may be pregnant; and she’s willing to marry the father, whichever of her fiances that turns out to be. On top of it all, her nothingburger schoolmate Herbert Slovinski suddenly pops up at one of the funerals she ferries her Grandma Mazur to, hitting on her relentlessly and gilding his importunities by cleaning and painting her shabby apartment and laying new carpet. Luckily, Lula’s on hand to offer cupcakes that stave off the worst disasters, and whenever this hodgepodge threatens to slow down, another FTA appears, or fails to appear.
As usual, Evanovich handles the funny stuff better (much better) than the mystery stuff.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781668003138
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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