Like a ragged old ghost, 007 returns for his annual haunt in this seventh Gardner/ Bond incarnation; but this time—unlike in last year's tepid No Deals, Mr. Bond—the spook shows some spunk as he tackles Gardner's niftiest villain to date. Bond's nemesis here is Vladimir Scorpius, ex-kingpin of outlaw arms-dealers, now known—after plastic surgery—as Father Valentine, guru to the The Meek Ones, a Moonie-like sect. No ordinary villain, Scorpius "was all that had ever been cruel, uncaring, revolting and unjust through history, from Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun to Himmler and Klaus Barbie." This welcome throwback to the moral gigantism of Ian Fleming's Bond tales first comes to 007's notice when a Meek One turns up drowned in the Thames, and Bond's number is in her phone book. Called back from an SAS fitness course, Bond pursues a crooked trail that leads to: offices of a high-tech credit card that allows Meek Ones to manipulate world bank accounts; the bedside of a drugged, noble-blooded Meek One; partnership with a sexy IRS agent on Scorpius' trail, and with an SAS man whose daughter has embraced Meek-dom; assorted bodies. Stalwarts Qu'te (female successor to Fleming's Q), M, Miss Moneypenny, and housekeeper May make proper appearances; but this busyness is only prelude to the unveiling of Scorpius' master plant—to dispatch (at a hefty price, for unnamed clients) his Meek Ones as human bombs to blow up world leaders—and to Bond's showdown with the fiend at his North Carolina compound. There, echoing old Fleming books, Bond combats insects and snakes (Dr. No), marries the IRS agent only to have her die (On her Majesty's Secret Service), and at last kills Scorpius in a display of 007-sadism unequalled since Scan Connery was lean and young. A swift climax sees Bond racing to nab a traitor in his ranks, and to stop a last Meek One from blowing up the P.M. and the US President. As in Gardner's others, there's little here of the gadgetry, sex, and humor that made Fleming's tales such fun; but this unusually grim Bond morality play offers plenty of fast comic-book action, some vivid characters, and enough references to the 007 canon to please most Bondphiles.
Pub Date: May 23, 1988
ISBN: 1605983845
Page Count: -
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1988
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
