Not a home run, but worth cheering for.
In Pierce’s debut thriller, a private investigator is stunned to see his quarry targeted in a deadly hit-and-run collision.
Parker Hanson is a New Hampshirite and former investigative reporter now doing PI work. But sitting long hours on stake-outs without falling asleep requires a “generous amount of caffeine,” which (“along with a poor family history”) factored into Parker’s recent heart attack before his 45th birthday. On a current case, when he’s not watching baseball or going to cardiac rehab, Parker is shadowing Mark Bowman, deputy chief of staff in Governor Jack Gordon’s office. Mark’s wife Brooke, an attractive woman in her mid-30s, hires Parker to find out if her suddenly distant husband is having an affair. “If he is, then he’s an idiot,” Parker thinks. But when trailing Mark, Parker sees him get into a woman’s car. Then a truck intentionally hits the couple’s car, engulfing it in flames, and the truck driver flees. Mark and the woman—who turns out to be Parker’s former co-worker, reporter Maggie Malone—are dead. Parker noses around the newspaper and talks to Maggie’s roommate, discovering that the journalist was investigating a private forest management concern called Tree Kings that had been awarded a state contract by the Gordon administration; a government IT staffer discovered that Tree Kings’ bid for the contract had been tampered with after the submission deadline, and Mark wouldn’t let the matter rest. The writing is crisp, but the plot is predictable. Still, Parker is an engaging character, one to root for. The theme of fatherhood weaves through the narrative; another thread follows Parker’s recovery efforts after his heart attack (the camaraderie at cardiac rehab fleshes out the protagonist). Baseball references pepper the text, but there’s no need to italicize them—or such other emphasized comments as “Good question.” The late-stage introduction of the sweet bloodhound Minerva is a welcome extra.
Not a home run, but worth cheering for.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2025
ISBN: 9798991643900
Page Count: 320
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2024
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
“Nasty little fellows…always get their comeuppance,” a movie character once said. Deeply satisfying.
Following the mysterious disappearance of his wife, a struggling London novelist journeys to a remote Scottish island to try to get his mojo back—but all, of course, is not what it seems.
Grady Green hits the pinnacle of his publishing career on the same night that his life goes off the rails—first his book lands on the New York Times bestseller list, and then his wife, Abby, goes missing on her way home. A year later, Grady is a mere shadow of his former self: out of money and out of ideas. So, when his agent, Abby’s godmother, suggests that he spend some time on the Isle of Amberly, in a log cabin left to her by one of her writers, it seems as good a plan as any. With free housing for himself and his dog and a beautiful, distraction-free environment, maybe he can finally complete the next novel. But from the very beginning, Grady’s experiences with Amberly seem weird, if not downright ominous: As a visitor, he’s not allowed to bring his car onto the island; the local businesses are only open for a few hours at a time; and there are no birds. At all. Not to mention the skeletal hand he finds buried under the floorboards of the cabin, the creepy harmonica music in the woods, and the occasional sighting of a woman in a red coat who’s a dead ringer for Abby. As Grady falls deeper and deeper into insomnia and alcoholism, he begins to realize his being on the island is no accident—and that should make him very afraid. Through occasional chapters from before Abby’s disappearance, told from her point of view, we learn that Grady is not necessarily a reliable narrator, and the book’s slow unfolding of dread, mystery, and then truth is both creative and well-paced. Every chapter heading is an oxymoron, like the title, reminding us of the contradictions at the heart of every story.
“Nasty little fellows…always get their comeuppance,” a movie character once said. Deeply satisfying.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781250337788
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2024
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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