Fans are guaranteed to enjoy the ride as long they don’t ask awkward questions like “Huh?” afterward.
Two weeks before her final exams to become an architect, a Boston woman is offered an amazing professional opportunity that comes at a shockingly steep price.
The good news for Sloane Connolly is that an anonymous client of suavely insinuating attorney Patrick Tempter is willing to pay through the nose for her to design a memorial to six people. His staggering offer includes a brand-new office for Sloane and an all-expenses-paid cross-country trip for her to unearth information about the six honored souls. The so-so news is that the client refuses to identify the six honorees until Sloane has signed a contract and won’t reveal his own identity even then. The terrible news is that shortly after Sloane’s single mother, prickly Maeve O’Connor, vanishes and police find her car and a pair of her shoes abandoned in Northfield, Massachusetts, Sloane’s ex-boyfriend Roger, not one to take his dismissal lightly, begins carpet-bombing her with demands that she meet and talk with him and escalating threats of what will happen if she doesn’t. That makes it a perfect time for Sloane to elude Roger by flying all over the place to dig up details about academic Lawrence Miner, model Wendy Wilson, nurse Elizabeth Anderson, tech entrepreneur Martin Barrett, counselor Michael Smithson, and insurance broker Ted Hillary, all of whom turn out to have met suspicious deaths. Sloane’s fast-moving investigation in the first half of this overextended thriller sets a high bar that the second half, which unsurprisingly links the commission to Sloane’s troubled family history, can’t meet. Readers who don’t share Katzenbach’s appetite for philosophizing about murder can safely skip the last 50 pages.
Fans are guaranteed to enjoy the ride as long they don’t ask awkward questions like “Huh?” afterward.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9798200894116
Page Count: 506
Publisher: Blackstone
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2026
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.
What hasn’t legendary legal eagle Grisham tried yet? How about a thriller about serial kidnapping and international terrorism.
When Paul and Chelsea Tanner disappear during a day trip on their Paris honeymoon, their abductors demand a ransom of $2 million from Chelsea’s wealthy parents, and a few days later the same sum from Paul’s much less well-heeled parents. After orthopedist Lowell Clayburn, Chelsea’s father, ponies up the ransom without breathing a word to the authorities, his daughter is promptly released. But even though Paul’s parents sell their home, liquidate their assets, and borrow money from the Clayburns to meet the kidnappers’ demands, the villains hold on to Paul anyway. Asked whether he’s ever seen such an outcome in a double kidnapping, FBI deputy director Andrew Strong tells Lowell: “No, this is a new one.” But it’s not, as Strong knows all too well; it’s the third such active case, all involving honeymooning couples whose bridegrooms had served in the armed forces. After masterfully drawing readers in with his bare-knuckle account of the Tanners’ abduction and the attempt by their families and the CIA to tell the lies required to keep caring friends and the rapacious press at bay, Grisham effortlessly switches gears to follow CIA agent Rae Claire Russo and Stuart Nash, a former Department of Justice prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay who agrees to marry her so they can serve as bait for the kidnappers, whose motives include justice and revenge as well as cold hard cash. So much for the imprisoned Paul’s wistful reflection that “hopefully, it was only about money.”
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9780385550543
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2026
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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