Colorless and predictable work from Berlin-resident Fitzek.
By-the-numbers thriller about a father who unravels the tale behind his daughter’s disappearance.
When psychiatrist Viktor Larenz’s daughter Josy was 12, he took her to an allergist, seeking help for a mysterious illness that caused severe vomiting and diarrhea. She passed into the examining room, never to be seen again. Or so Viktor says. As Viktor relates what happened, over four years have passed and he’s strapped to his bed in a sanitarium. Is he truthful or mad? With that familiar premise, Fitzek begins a narrative that follows the beat of a metronome as short chapters tap out “premise-conflict-cliffhanger.” To recover from the trauma of his loss, Viktor leaves his wife and home in Berlin, heading to a retreat on an island in the North Sea. There a woman who says she’s Anna Glass begs Viktor to treat her schizophrenia. A novelist, Glass claims she encounters in real life characters from her stories, and often in violent situations. Because one of the characters bears uncanny similarities to missing Josy, Viktor, desperate for clues to her disappearance, takes the author’s case. In flatly written sessions, Viktor pushes Glass to the edge, straining patient-client ethics. But is Glass pushing him? “‘I know a bad egg when I see one,’” the island’s mayor warns the psychiatrist. Victor soon concedes, “There was something strange about Anna Glass, something he couldn’t begin to fathom.” Indeed. Anna arrived on the island with fishing twine and a carving knife. She beats Viktor’s dog to death. She erases the hard drive of his computer. And she may not be Anna at all. When Viktor, ill with flu, discovers her pouring white powder into his tea, he suspects she may not be schizophrenic, but a canny plotter who abducted his daughter. On the inevitable storm-tossed night, Viktor learns what Glass knows. Years later Viktor’s doctors set events into meaningful context. The revelations will more likely elicit a hiss than a gasp.
Colorless and predictable work from Berlin-resident Fitzek.Pub Date: March 17, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-312-38200-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2009
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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