An engaging and delightful creature-feature gem.
A colossal multilegged insect terrorizes the Lone Star State in Bills’ horror novella.
When West Texas lawmen find they can’t explain a human-arm-sized “stubby tentacle” clutched in a dead man’s hand, they know it’s time to bring in an expert. It certainly looks familiar to assistant university professor Annette Carden, who has a degree in entomology and a specialty in centipedes and millipedes. The strange body part likely came from a Devil Head centipede, except one this length would mean the Devil Head is around 40 feet long. As these centipedes are fast, aggressive, and venomous, other Texans are likely in trouble—and soon, another few mutilated bodies confirm the danger. Sheriff Axil Rafferty orders those under his command to gather reliable people and arm them to the teeth, so they can “try to corner this thing and kill it.” They’re not sure how many bullets it will take, or even if such firepower will be effective, but Rafferty and the others will do whatever it takes to protect West Texas. Bills’ compact tale hits the ground running with a prompt introduction to the creature. Much of the narrative, however, consists of prolonged but surprisingly absorbing discussions of the Devil Head centipede. Carden, for example, provides expertly derived specs on the creepy-crawlies, and someone else suggests a local nuclear waste dump as the potential reason for this insect’s staggering dimensions. Accordingly, the novella isn’t so much scary as it is compelling. There are humorous bits, as well, as when Rafferty refers to the scientific name Chilopod as “chilidog.” The book’s only downside is that it’s all over too soon, as the appealing cast easily could have carried a longer work. The denouement, nonetheless, is a knockout, and Bills includes a “b-side” in the short, graphic, and profane bonus story, “The Opening Day.” In it, a horrifying near-future America has legalized killing protesters, and a young, bigoted right-wing extremist’s murderous agenda takes an unexpected turn.
An engaging and delightful creature-feature gem.Pub Date: May 10, 2023
ISBN: 9798218199333
Page Count: 84
Publisher: Starkweather Imprints
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
