From Publishers Weekly
British author Brookmyre (One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night; Quite Ugly One Morning; etc.) makes his American debut with this thriller, but seems to have left most of his punch on the far side of the ocean. Scottish photographer Steff Kennedy is attending a B-list movie festival, held at an L.A. hotel, where he intends to snap some pics and joke about the self-importance of Hollywood. There he meets and makes eyes with Maddy Witherson, a sweet, misunderstood porn star famous for her leading role in Whore of Babylon; it is later revealed she was sexually abused as a girl by her Bible-waving father, a U.S. senator. Meanwhile, LAPD officer Larry Freeman is investigating the mysterious disappearance of a group of scientists from an ocean research vessel. Everyone's paths cross when a conservative Christian group decides to augment its anti-Hollywood rhetoric with a well-placed bomb, which literally dumps Maddy into Steff's arms. The bombers, however, demand an even more extreme remedy Maddy's suicide on national television as an act of public repentance or they'll blow up a boat full of Hollywood executives. While it's obvious that everyone will scramble to stop the bombers, less plausible elements like a bunch of long-lost religious scrolls and lots of chatter about the impending end of the world, are distracting. Brookmyre's previous book may have achieved some success across the Atlantic, but this jumbled effort feels like it's been cobbled together from whatever trashy American TV shows are currently in British syndication.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--Ce texte provient d'une édition qui n'est plus publiée ou qui est non diponible.
From Booklist
Brookmyre, a Fleet Street journalist turned fiction writer, has the rep in the UK of being a master of the comic thriller. This is his first novel published in the U.S. It fully lives up to its British press, delivering fast, just this side of out-of-control action, characters at once bizarre and sympathetic, and a cynical take on both sides of the law. When an oceanic research ship is found with not a single member of its crew on board, Sergeant Larry Freeman of the LAPD, sleepwalking through his job after the death of his son, is sprung from his security duties at a shabby B-movie festival and assigned to the case of the missing crew. The trail takes Freeman right through the tangle of the L.A. underworld and into the middle of a terrorist plot, the untangling of which involves dealing with the crazed and confused--and with his own despairing inertia. Excruciating suspense.
Connie FletcherCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
--Ce texte provient d'une édition qui n'est plus publiée ou qui est non diponible.