by Alan Drew ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 14, 2022
A moving, grippingly relevant mystery.
Young neo-Nazis in Rancho Santa Elena, a quiet Southern California town, conduct a campaign of hate crimes against minorities, leading police detective Ben Wade to uncover a widespread White supremacist conspiracy.
Set in 1987, this thriller focuses on Jacob, a 14-year-old boy who’s recruited into a gang of skinheads by his 20-something neighbor Ian after Ian sees him testing out homemade pipe bombs in his backyard. Ian, the son of a corrupt councilman whose eldest son was killed in Vietnam, has terrorized a Vietnamese shop owner named Bao Phan and his family by leaving a fatally poisoned, throat-slit dog by their back door. Jacob, the abused son of a traumatized Vietnam veteran, is officially inducted as a skinhead after being pressured to brutally attack Mexican migrant workers. Shocked to discover his father is having an affair with a young Vietnamese woman—Bao’s 22-year-old daughter, Linh—Jacob is overcome with rage. Meanwhile, having left the LAPD, worn down by gang wars in that city, Wade is surprised to confront an even worse form of violence in Rancho Santa Elena. In Los Angeles, there was a logic to the gang wars, which were over drugs, territory, and money. “This is just hate,” he says. “Nothing rational about it.” Though set in the past, at a time when the internet was first enabling hate groups opposed to the very existence of the federal government to link up via online bulletin boards, Drew’s sequel to Shadow Man (2017) could hardly speak more powerfully to the present moment in the United States. A terrific crime novel with an explosive climax, the book dares to find a level of empathy with its young perpetrators, connecting the dots between being frightened and “walking around in the dark” and turning to hate.
A moving, grippingly relevant mystery.Pub Date: June 14, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-399-59212-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
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New York Times Bestseller
by Tana French ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 5, 2024
An absorbing crime yarn.
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New York Times Bestseller
A divorced American detective tries to blend into rural Ireland in this sequel to The Searcher (2020).
In fictional Ardnakelty, on Ireland’s west coast, lives retired American cop Cal Hooper, who busies himself repairing furniture with 15-year-old Theresa “Trey” Reddy and fervently wishes to be boring. Then into town pops Trey’s long-gone, good-for-nothing dad, Johnny, all smiles and charm. Much to her distaste, he says he wants to reclaim his fatherly role. In fact, he’s on the run from a criminal for a debt he can’t repay, and he has a cockamamie scheme to persuade local townsfolk that there might be gold in the nearby mountain with a vein that might run through some of their properties. (What, no leprechauns?) “It’s not sheep shite you’ll be smelling in a few months’ time, man,” he tells a farmer. “It’s champagne and caviar.” Some people have fun fantasizing about sudden riches, but they know better. Johnny’s pursuer, Cillian Rushborough, comes to town, and Johnny tries to convince him he could get rich by purchasing people’s land. Alas, someone bashes Rushborough’s brains in, and now there’s a murder mystery. The plot is a bit of a stretch, but the characters and their relationships work well. Trey detests Johnny for not being in her life, and now that he’s back, she neither wants nor needs him. She gets on much better with Cal. Still, she’s a testy teenager when she thinks someone is not treating her like an adult. Cal is aware of this, and he’s careful how he talks to her. Johnny, not so much: “I swear to fuck, women are only put on this earth to wreck our fuckin’ heads,” he whines about Trey’s mother, briefly forgetting he’s talking to Trey. The book abounds in local color and lively dialogue.
An absorbing crime yarn.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9780593493434
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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SEEN & HEARD
by Elliot Ackerman & James Stavridis ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 12, 2024
A game effort at a tough theme.
The Singularity may become the new ultimate weapon in the aftermath of a nuclear debacle.
If the page-and-a-half prologue doesn’t stop the reader cold, nothing will. It begins: “If a beam of light / energy / open + / close— / reopen == / repeat / stop...” Stop, indeed. This will prompt only the geekiest among us to move on to Chapter 1. But do turn the page. In 2054, the U.S. is in turmoil. Two decades earlier, China nuked San Diego and Galveston while the U.S. inflicted the same on Shanghai and Shenzhen. In the aftermath, the two countries no longer dominate the world, and traditional U.S. political parties are no more. The current action begins when the physically fit President Ángel Castro collapses while giving a speech, prompting “malicious rumors that the president had suffered some sort of health crisis.” He had, and he dies. Of course, there are profound suspicions over his sudden demise. Was the president’s aorta inflamed by a sequence of computer code, à la the prologue? Is he a victim of “remote gene editing” by an unknown entity? Hence the inklings of the 21st century’s new existential threat, a race to achieve the Singularity, where—to oversimplify—technology and humanity become one. The cast includes some holdovers from the authors’ last book, 2034, including Dr. Sandy Chowdhury and Julia Hunt, a woman born in China with allegiance to the U.S. But key is the elusive (and nonfictional) Dr. Ray Kurzweil, thought to be living in Brazil. Meanwhile, American society threatens to explode into civil war between Dreamers and Truthers. But if the ultimate threat to humanity is the Singularity, it doesn’t come through convincingly on these pages. In 2034, the stakes were brutally clear, with millions of lives on the line. Two decades hence, they’re mushier—serious to be sure, but tougher to wrap up into a thriller. With apologies to T. S. Eliot: This is the way the book ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.
A game effort at a tough theme.Pub Date: March 12, 2024
ISBN: 9780593489864
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
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