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. This one is for fans with even more patience than the parents of those kidnapped boys.Īre we not men? We are-well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).Ī zombie apocalypse is one thing. Is it possible the rescued boy isn’t even Patrick?Ĭoben, who normally has few rivals at keeping the pot boiling (Fool Me Once, 2016, etc.), this time settles for a simmer until unleashing his trademark twists late in the proceedings. Even when Myron’s nephew Mickey and his goth girlfriend, Ema Wyatt, figure out a way to get him to open up, he has nothing to add to the Finnish au pair’s tale of the kidnapping. Their rejoicing is muted, though, by the continued absence of Rhys, which Chick and his wife, Brooke, feel all the more keenly because the Moores erect a protective wall of silence around Patrick. Following an unexpectedly crooked road, Myron and Win eventually flush out Patrick again, and his now-divorced parents instantly spirit him back home. Their inquiries lead the pair to a gamer called Fat Gandhi, who demands 100,000 pounds for each of the boys-a discount price, considering that the million-dollar ransom Rhys’ father, hedge fund manager Chick Baldwin, dropped off 10 years ago led nowhere. He phones an old buddy back in the U.S., sports agent–turned-detective Myron Bolitar ( Live Wire, 2011), yanks him away from his fiancee, Terese Collins, once more, and jets him to London. But Win, whose stacks of old money have still left him powerless to track down Patrick and Rhys for a decade, isn’t about to give up now. Their potential reunion is disrupted by a trio of menacing toughs, and by the time Win looks up, the boy has taken off.

But what about the other?įollowing an unlikely tip, Windsor Horne Lockwood III spots a boy he’s sure is his missing cousin Rhys Baldwin’s friend Patrick Moore working a rough-trade corner of London’s King’s Cross Station. Ten years after a pair of 6-year-olds vanish from a suburban New Jersey home, one of them is spotted in London.

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