A thought-provoking novel of international relations that raises provocative questions.
An American military analyst uncovers a North Korean plot in Barr’s debut espionage thriller set in the Korean Peninsula.
When Jesse Cullen arrives back in his adopted home country of South Korea after a three-year tour as an analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington, D.C., he discovers things have changed. For one thing, anti-Americanism is on the rise; leaders of student organizations have been co-opted by the North, resulting in increasingly violent nightly protests. An anthrax attack kills 70 newly arrived U.S. soldiers attending an orientation session, and evidence points to Islamic terrorists, but Jesse believes it was launched by North Korea to give fearful South Koreans another reason to kick American forces out of the country, and he has evidence to back his theory up. No one wants to listen to what Jesse is saying, though, because the current U.S. president wants to negotiate a peace treaty between the two Koreas, with an eye toward winning a Nobel Peace Prize. Jesse faces a balancing act, trying to get someone in authority to listen and act upon his evidence while still protecting those he loves. Meanwhile, Jesse doesn’t realize that someone he knows isn’t whom they seem to be. Barr, a former U.S. Army Intelligence officer, effectively trains a spotlight on the lingering division in the Korean Peninsula. If the Korean War is the forgotten war, this book argues, then the situation in the region today is the forgotten aftermath—at least in the United States, where too many people are indifferent to international developments. Barr’s knowledge and research shine through in his detailed depictions of the prosperous South and insular North. Jesse gives voice to the author’s clear frustration with how important intel gets buried in favor of political expedience. However, the novel allows readers to see the motivations of complex, well-meaning characters on both sides of the conflict.
A thought-provoking novel of international relations that raises provocative questions.Pub Date: July 29, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-66784-137-3
Page Count: 228
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Although it lacks the surgical precision of Slaughter’s very best nightmares, this one richly earns its title.
More than a decade after a Georgia man is convicted of a monstrous double murder, an uncomfortably similar crime frees him and resets the search for the guilty party.
In Clifton County, home to the Rich Cliftons and the other Cliftons, the disappearance of teens Madison Dalrymple and Cheyenne Baker during the Halloween festivities hits everyone in North Falls hard. Working with her father, Sheriff Gerald Clifton, Deputy Emmy Lou Clifton hears the clock ticking down as she races frantically to get leads on the two friends, who’d been secretly plotting to take off for Atlanta after some undisclosed big score. As a longtime friend of Madison’s mother, Hannah, Emmy hopes against hope to find the missing teens before they’re both dead. By the time Emmy’s hopes are dashed, two unpleasantly likely suspects with strong attachments to underage sex partners have emerged, and one of them ends up in prison. In a bold move, Slaughter jumps over the next 12 years to the case of Paisley Walker, a 14-year-old whose disappearance catches the eye of retiring FBI criminal psychologist Jude Archer, who promptly crosses the country to come to Clifton County and take charge—um, that is, consult—on this heartrending new investigation. Emmy, suddenly and shockingly deprived of counsel from the parents who’ve supported her all her life, doesn’t get along any better with Jude than with the larger circle of Cliftons and the Clifton-Cliftons. But together they identify one new suspect, then another, before a shootout that arrives so early you just know there are still more surprises to come.
Although it lacks the surgical precision of Slaughter’s very best nightmares, this one richly earns its title.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2025
ISBN: 9780063336773
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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