Genre fans will savor the espionage and political intrigue while cheering a spy who can dodge bullets with sophistication.
Australian spy Luthan Fennes returns for his third outing in Angliss’ (Stingerbones, 2013, etc.) thriller series, this time to find who’s behind the bombings of German embassies throughout the world.
Australian Security Intelligence Organisation operative Fennes, aka the Retimer, is in Ankara, Turkey, looking into connections between Turkey’s German Embassy and recent bombings at the German Embassy in Australia. He doesn’t prevent another bombing, but he does uncover info on Johann Weber, who works at the embassy and may have been a contact for the bombers. While Turkish police believe Fennes is responsible for the bombings, he searches for the person who ordered the embassy attacks. After Fennes narrowly escapes an assassination attempt, villagers save the injured man, and he returns the favor by tracking down Asli, a victim of human traffickers who’s been missing for two years. Angliss’ writing style takes some getting used to; he’s prone to uncommon words—e.g., “refaced” (here, meaning to face someone or something again)—and strange wording, as when Fennes “entered the Internet” on his mobile phone. But the espionage, reminiscent of James Bond novels, is centered on the protagonist’s mental capacity over physical prowess. Even the action scenes, of which there are quite a few, are meticulously plotted; it’s less about Fennes’ instinctual reaction than a distinct assessment each time someone shoots at him or tosses a grenade in his direction. Fennes also manages a great deal of chic: He’s often adorned in a black suit and tie (for that matter, so are many of the villains) and drives a top-of-the-line vehicle, like a BMW or his souped-up Rallyon, which he equates with the “famous modern Batmobile.” Asli acts as a romantic interest of sorts, but Fennes’ apparent love for a woman he hardly knows seems out of place and happens so quickly that it’s not very believable. Angliss takes his hero on an adventure around the globe—Moscow, Iraq, North Korea—and he augments his story with humor and dishy one-liners, as when an ensnared suspect threatens to kill Fennes and the spy nonchalantly responds, “I’ve heard that a million times.”
Genre fans will savor the espionage and political intrigue while cheering a spy who can dodge bullets with sophistication.Pub Date: March 12, 2014
ISBN: 978-1495448799
Page Count: 270
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 8, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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