Fast-moving and quirky fiction from Madrid.
An exciting thriller set in Spain and recently translated from Spanish.
Beleaguered by crime, the European Union has created the secret Red Queen project, the name inspired by Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, designed to “adapt continually to keep up with the bad guys.” One of their tools is Antonia Scott, a non-cop who has a history of providing insights into the criminal mind. She is the smartest person in the world, and she never forgets anything. Her husband is in a coma for which she wrongly blames herself, and she contemplates suicide for a strict three minutes a day, along with a few other quirks. “My brain…isn't normal,” she says. “I can do things others find impossible.” Police pair her up with Inspector Jon Gutiérrez, an overweight gay cop whose career is in a peck of trouble for planting heroin to gain a conviction. Despite a chasm of differences, they quickly accept each other and work together to track down a criminal named Ezekiel who has slowly drained the blood from a young man's carotid artery. Then Ezekiel kidnaps Carla Ortiz, the daughter of the world's richest man. Ransom is out of the question because he just wants to teach the mogul a lesson. Antonia believes that Ezekiel kidnaps and kills for a very specific reason, probably for power. “Essentially, I’m a good person,” Ezekiel tells himself. Good enough to think of Psalm 23, anyway, as he anoints one victim’s head with oil. That doesn’t mean there won’t be blood, though. A scene with an explosion splatters grisly detail across a couple of pages, and there is a nice balance among character, action, and setting—a qanat, or underground water tunnel in Madrid, is a great place for an evildoer to set booby traps. Red Queen (Reina Roja in the original version) is the first of a completed trilogy written by Gómez-Jurado. The next two, Loba Negra (Black Wolf) and Rey Blanco (White King), must be translated into English, because thriller fans will be waiting.
Fast-moving and quirky fiction from Madrid.Pub Date: March 14, 2023
ISBN: 9781250853677
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
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
Fast-moving excitement with a satisfying finish.
The feds must protect an accused criminal and an orphaned girl.
Maybe you’ve met him before as protagonist of The 6:20 Man (2022): Ex-Army Ranger Travis Devine, who’d had the dubious fortune to tangle with “the girl on the train,” is now assigned by his homeland security boss to protect Danny Glass, who's awaiting trial on multiple RICO charges in Washington state. Devine has what it takes: He “was a closer, snooper, fixer, investigator,” and, when necessary, a killer. These skills are on full display as the deaths of three key witnesses grind justice to a temporary halt. Glass has a 12-year-old niece, Betsy Odom, and each is the other’s only living relative—her parents recently died of an apparent drug overdose. The FBI has temporary guardianship of Betsy, who's a handful. She tells Travis that though she’s not yet 13, she's 28 in “life-shit years.” The financially well-heeled Glass wants to be her legal guardian with an eye to eventual adoption, but what are his real motives? And what happens to her if he's convicted? Meanwhile, Betsy insists that her parents never touched drugs, and she begs Travis to find out how they really died. This becomes part of a mission that oozes danger. The small town of Ricketts has a woman mayor who’s full of charm on the surface, but deeply corrupt and deadly when crossed. She may be linked to a subversive group called "12/24/65," as in 1865, when the Ku Klux Klan beast was born. Blood flows, bombs explode, and people perish, both good guys and not-so-good guys. Readers might ponder why in fiction as well as in life, it sometimes seems necessary for many to die so one may live. And what about the girl on the train? She's not necessary to the plot, but she's a fun addition as she pops in and out of the pages, occasionally leaving notes for Travis. Maybe she still wants him dead.
Fast-moving excitement with a satisfying finish.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781538757901
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
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