A complex work of stunning breadth and depth by a master of the genre.
The second half of Takamura’s compelling crime epic—following Lady Joker, Volume 1 (2021)—plumbs the connections between corporate malfeasance and social immorality.
There’s no attempt to pretend that Volume 2 stands alone. The opening section—Part 4, “The Threat”—opens in medias res during the summer of 1995. Chief Inspector of First Investigation Hidetsugu Kanzaki has just briefed the press about a poison gas attack on the subway perpetrated by a religious cult and evasively parried questions about Lady Joker, the crime group that had earlier kidnapped and released Kyosuke Shiroyama, president and CEO of the unscrupulous Hinode Beer. Lady Joker is now demanding 600 million yen in used bills from Shiroyama. Takamura’s explosive novel, based on actual events that are well known in Japan, persuasively depicts corruption at the heart of Japanese society in the late 20th century. The ethical center isn’t holding. Volume 1 highlighted the backstories of the five aggrieved men at the core of the kidnapping; Volume 2 also follows the police and the press corps, both closely monitoring Lady Joker. An extensive “Dramatis Personae” is invaluable in keeping track of the large cast of characters. At the center is a moral reckoning for Shiroyama, who’s forced to reevaluate his life and corporate tenure, eventually seeing the synergy in the personal, social, and political. Like Don DeLillo’s Underworld, Takamura’s sprawling saga situates its crime plot in the context of corruption. As it draws to a close, courtesy of multiple murders, abductions, fraud, blackmail, suicides, upheaval within law enforcement, and the inevitable coverup, city desk reporter Haruhisa Kubo, who’s documented it all on his Tokyo police beat, falls violently ill from this virus of societal decay.
A complex work of stunning breadth and depth by a master of the genre.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64129-0-296
Page Count: 600
Publisher: Soho Crime
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.
A sequel to The Grey Wolf (2024) that begins with the earlier novel’s last line: “We have a problem.” And what a problem it is.
Now that Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his allies in and out of the Sûreté du Québec have saved Canada’s water supply from poisoning on a grand scale, you might think they were entitled to some rest and relaxation in Three Pines. No such luck. Don Joseph Moretti, the Sixth Family head who ordered the hit-and-run on biologist Charles Langlois that nearly killed Gamache as well, is plotting still more criminal enterprises, and Gamache can’t be sure that Chief Inspector Evelyn Tardiff, who’s been cozying up to Moretti in order to get the goods on him, hasn’t gone over to the dark side herself. In fact, Gamache’s uncertainty about Evelyn sets the pattern for much of what follows, for another review of one of Langlois’ notebooks reveals a plot so monstrous that it’s impossible to be sure who’s not in on it. Is it really true, as paranoid online rumors have it, that “Canada is about to attack the U.S.”? Or is it really the other way around, as the discovery of War Plan Red would have it? As the threats loom larger and larger, they raise questions as to whether the Black Wolf, the evil power behind them, is Moretti, disgraced former Deputy Prime Minister Marcus Lauzon, whom Gamache has arranged to have released from prison, or someone even more highly placed. A brief introductory note dating Penny’s delivery of the uncannily prophetic manuscript to September 2024 will do little to assuage the anxieties of concerned readers.
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781250328175
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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
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