Hank Palace is a cop—was a cop—who takes on one final case, a mission to find a friend’s husband. The missing persons case is the detective story, but the parallel storyline—about an asteroid just months away from destroying Earth—hovers over every character. Peter Berkrot’s narration keeps pace with the nervous energy of the plot. He gives appropriate voices to the variety of commune-dwelling characters whom Palace encounters on his investigation. But what becomes of freaked-out people who are waiting for the end of days is ultimately more interesting than whether Palace solves his case. Berkrot’s varying tones and quick dialogue fit this series’ second book well, leaving readers pondering Palace’s next adventure. M.B. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine
Tomorrow Tommy Wallach’s We All Looked Up will make impact in bookstores everywhere, crashing onto shelves in an epic explosion. Well. Okay, it won’t actually do that. But when you’re talking about a novel that features an asteroid hurtling toward the planet, it’s hard to resist comparing it to a speedy chunk of space rock.
In keeping with the season, I—the agoraphobic bibliophile—was recently forced to leave the friendly confines of my home to travel to a local megamall to see my daughters’ holiday dance performances. The trip included a 30-minute white knuckle drive through a snowstorm, a nightmarish mall parking situation where a hostile woman actually got out of […]