A thoroughly enjoyable and skillfully crafted tale.
In Cherin’s novel, four strangers aim to win $50,000 in a contest from a Southern California radio station.
In 1981, Michael Kingman is a DJ for the “Mighty 690,” a Top 40 radio station based out of San Diego. Disenchanted with the station’s new management and wanting a career change, Michael decides to hold a treasure hunt as a last hurrah before hopefully moving on to greener pastures. The station hides $50,000 and Michael discloses a new clue to his listeners each day, hinting at the money’s location. The three (ultimately four) contestants at the center of the narrative are Danny Baker, a lonely motorcycle racer who spends much of his career crashing his bike; Sally Lang, a single mother and bank teller who is stealing money from her job; and Augie Kloptman, a Holocaust survivor who relocated from New York after losing his wife, Esther. Danny has dreams of opening a mechanic shop. Sally needs the money because an auditor is coming to check up on the bank—a co-worker knows she has been embezzling, so Sally needs to cover her tracks. Augie, a janitor at a local shul, enlists the help of 14-year-old Jason Schneidman to decode the station’s clues, and the pair form an unlikely but charming partnership. What comes through most strongly in Cherin’s tale is the strange but heartwarming interconnectedness of existence, symbolized in this case by the radio. Supporting this theme are the ways in which the characters solve the station’s clues by associating the answers with memories or events in their lives (in a manner reminiscent of the film Slumdog Millionaire). Cherin’s prose is richly detailed, deftly describing the early ’80s setting as well as illustrating the specific environs of the characters: “She buttoned her blouse and walked through the dimly lit bedroom, an aroma of cigarette stains and mold wafting from the walls, and bounced her way like a pinball down the hallway...” Cherin’s story, equal parts engaging and evocative, feels human and lived in.
A thoroughly enjoyable and skillfully crafted tale.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9798989467204
Page Count: 172
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 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
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