Richly textured, compulsively readable, and brilliant throughout.
An art auctioneer gets entangled with a Russian oligarch.
It’s 2013, and Martin, a junior specialist at a posh London auction house, spends his days wheeling and dealing with art-collecting elites and his evenings drinking beer in a grubby basement apartment with his depressed musician roommate. Then one evening Oleg Gorelov—a Russian oligarch with a checkered past and a peerless art collection—comes into the house and casually buys a Basquiat for 10 million pounds. Oleg’s far younger wife, Marina, is Martin’s old college friend, and in the wake of the sale, she and Martin resume their acquaintance. This gives Martin access to Oleg, who eventually shows Martin a work by Russian painter Kazimir Malevich that art historians believed lost. If Martin can acquire that painting for sale by the house, it will drastically boost his career. But Martin’s growing proximity to the Gorelovs soon gets complicated: First, his friendship with Marina evolves into something they have to hide; then Oleg decides he’s going to remake himself (and the country he helped plunder) by challenging Putin’s reign and running for president on a reformist platform. Reed’s riveting second novel is at once a romance, a geopolitical thriller, a meditation on art, and an investigation of the moral compromises that everyone makes in the gravitational presence of wealth. Reed does a masterful job of complicating his characters’ motivations. Does Marina feel something special for Martin, or is she just dissatisfied with Oleg? Can Martin’s interests in Marina be uncoupled from his interest in Oleg’s art collection? To what extent is Martin’s love of painters like Malevich influenced by his knowledge of the insane value that the art market places on Malevich’s work? Are Oleg’s reformist ambitions motivated by a sincere regret about the nation-ruining side effects of his ruthless accumulation of wealth, or is he just nostalgic for the “wild years” when he could profit from his visions unencumbered by weak constraints like guilt?
Richly textured, compulsively readable, and brilliant throughout.Pub Date: March 22, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982121-62-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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