An action-packed thriller featuring sturdy characters.
The third installment in Dugan’s (Irrevocable Resolution, 2016, etc.) series finds CIA operative Capt. Alan Joubert facing off against a corrupt, U.S.-funded military unit.
After narrowly surviving his last assignment, Alan has a new CIA handler in the Absolute Resolution program. Taking out cocaine labs and ammunition-stocked warehouses has made him a target in Central and South America, where he typically works, so the agency plans on shifting him to the Middle East and Asia Pacific. But first, he must take out leaders of the Contras in Costa Rica, a military unit financed by the U.S. government. These leaders are reportedly working with a drug cartel and committing war crimes in Nicaragua; soon, Alan is shocked when he witnesses Contra troopers savagely attacking villagers. After he completes his mission, he’s still uncertain that he eliminated the corruption entirely, so, with a few friends, he returns to Costa Rica with CIA support. It soon becomes clear that someone has information about his team, leading to startling deaths and a direct assault against Alan himself. Like earlier installments, Dugan’s novel is episodic (with an unrelated Taipei mission), but it’s primarily concentrated on the Contras. Alan and his cohorts—Rene, Fast Eddie, and Wild Bill, all of whom he’s known since Vietnam—are efficient and disciplined during operations, and the author meticulously details their gear and aspects of their stealth procedures, such as their use of hand signals. Lynn, Alan’s partner in Taipei, is the series’ strongest female character yet—a proficient Chinese-American agent who speaks Mandarin, Cantonese, and Korean. Dugan wisely caters to new readers by offering background info on returning characters, although the story’s 1980s setting won’t be immediately apparent until the appearance of antiquated technology, such as pagers and a cassette player. The ending leaves open the possibility of a sequel, but there’s enough closure to end the series as a trilogy.
An action-packed thriller featuring sturdy characters.Pub Date: July 22, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5472-7650-9
Page Count: 178
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An addictive psychological thriller.
When a mysterious novel appears on her bedside table, a successful documentary filmmaker finds herself face to face with a secret that threatens to unravel life as she knows it.
Catherine Ravenscroft has built a dream life, or close to it: the devoted husband, the house in London, the award-winning career as a documentary filmmaker. And though she’s never quite bonded with her 25-year-old son the way she’d hoped, he’s doing fine—there are worse things than being an electronics salesman. But when she stumbles across a sinister novel called The Perfect Stranger—no one’s quite sure how it came into the house—Catherine sees herself in its pages, living out scenes from her past she’d hoped to forget. It’s a threat—but from whom? And why now, 20 years after the fact? Meanwhile, Stephen Brigstocke, a retired teacher, widowed and in pain, is desperate to exact revenge on Catherine and make her pay for what happened all those years ago. The story is told in alternating chapters, Catherine's in the third-person and Stephen's in the first, as the two orbit each other, predator and prey, and the novel moves between the past and the present to paint a portrait of two troubled families with trauma bubbling under the surface. As their lives become increasingly entangled, Stephen’s obsession grows, Catherine’s world crumbles, and it becomes clear that—in true thriller form—everything may not be as it seems. But how much destruction must be wrought before the truth comes out? And when it does, will there be anything left to salvage? While the long buildup to the big reveal begins to drag, Knight’s elegant plot and compelling (if not unexpected) characters keep the heart of the novel beating even when the pacing falters. Atmospheric and twisting and ripe for TV adaptation, this debut novel never strays far from convention, but that doesn’t make it any less of a page-turner.
An addictive psychological thriller.Pub Date: May 19, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236225-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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