A tense, entertaining terrorist-on-the-run action yarn.
The manhunt for an assassin stretches around the world in Aithal’s twisty debut thriller.
The story unspools from a Taliban plot to assassinate Terence Collins, a Republican congressman from California who’s introduced a bill in 2021 to reinvade Afghanistan. Talib, an Afghan American man who’s the Taliban’s top agent on the West Coast, is assigned the hit; he duly kills Collins with a sniper shot from a yacht anchored near the congressman’s seaside mansion. Using his considerable criminal guile, mastery of disguise, and the stolen identity of a heart surgeon named Ramesh Kumar, Talib flees to Mumbai, India, on his way to Pakistan and Afghanistan. Pursuing him is Newport Beach Police Department Detective Tony Ramirez, assisted by telecommunications surveillance of the National Security Agency and by Inspector Sunil Deshpande of the Mumbai police. Ramirez, whose mother, Simran, is Indian and who speaks a smattering of Hindi, ends up in India himself, where he catches up with family and launches himself onto Talib’s trail. Aithal, the author of Beyond the Milky Way (2015), fleshes out this simple chase narrative with reams of intricate procedural details. The chapters from Talib’s third-person point of view regale readers with the nerve-wracking minutiae of the killer’s preparation and practice, disposal of evidence, use of makeup and disguises, and so on. (Readers also see the sneaky online ploys that the Taliban uses to radicalize Talib.) Tony’s sleuthing also features nifty moments, including a brute-force investigation of a day’s worth of airline passengers from Los Angeles to Mumbai. There are some effective scenes of violence, but most of the action is in the labyrinthine calculations of the adversaries, conveyed with chilling aplomb by Aithal’s punchy, hard-boiled prose: “He could have quickly put a bullet between his eyes and stuffed his body in the trunk of the Toyota….It would take at least 16 to 20 hours before the stench was noticeably pungent.” The result is a page-turner that offers suspense with real psychological depth.
A tense, entertaining terrorist-on-the-run action yarn.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 979-8-84045-634-7
Page Count: 295
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Filled with action, violence, and more twists than a bag of pretzels.
Second of the Walter Nash thrillers—following Nash Falls (2025)—in which the remade hero seeks vengeance.
Due to urgent circumstances, Nash has bulked himself up to become the “muscled and tatted fighting machine” now known as Dillon Hope. His antagonist is Victoria Steers, a global drug dealer who wants him dead. Not realizing his new identity, she enlists Hope to free her mother, Masuyo, from a prison in Myanmar. As an incentive, she shoots one of her associates and threatens to frame Hope for the murder unless he complies. She also wants him to find Nash. He in turn wants to kill Victoria to avenge the death of his innocent daughter, Maggie. “If I go down,” he muses, “I’m taking others with me. Starting with Victoria Steers.” He learns that Victoria had killed all her siblings to eliminate business competition. But as heartless as Victoria is, her mother, Masuyo, is even worse. In league with the Chinese government in a perverse plan to kill as many Americans as possible through fentanyl overdose, she shows contempt for Victoria for her perceived weaknesses. Readers won’t find many happy family relationships here: mother-daughter, father-son, husband-wife—all fraught. Hope’s employer, who accompanies him to Myanmar, is a billionaire chief executive with a dodgy past (i.e., probably killed his father). And there’s a mega-billionaire with an astronomical IQ and ditch-deep morals who, putting it mildly, does not have America’s best interests at heart. As a teenager, he’d defeated two world chess champions; as an adult, he regards his dealings with the world in terms of master chess moves. Only one character seems truly decent and credible—Hiroko, Victoria’s former nanny and lifelong companion, who provides Hope with valuable insights into the Steers’ background, which is partly Chinese. Searing grudges, simple evil, and not-so-simple misunderstandings carry the cast through this complex, action-packed plot. This sequel ties out the loose ends dangling in Nash Falls, which would be helpful to read first. To get to the requisite ending, though, Baldacci takes pains to surprise the reader. It works but often feels forced.
Filled with action, violence, and more twists than a bag of pretzels.Pub Date: April 14, 2026
ISBN: 9781538758021
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
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