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
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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