A strong second installment in a series we hope continues.
On a post-Putin mission to gather intel on a powerfully connected Russian oligarch in London, CIA agent Lyndsey Duncan guiltily befriends the man's lonely, woefully mistreated British wife.
In this sequel to Red Widow (2021), Duncan is sent by her American bosses to check on a troublesome asset/Russian war criminal. But no sooner does she arrive in the U.K. than she is summoned by her old MI6 flame, Davis Ranford. In spite of the trouble their fling got them into the last time they worked together, he urgently asks her to team up with him again. Her assignment is to infiltrate the world of billionaire oligarch Mikhail Rotenberg and uncover his hidden ties (financial and other) to the new Russian leader, Viktor Kosygin. Though Rotenberg poured millions into Putin's reckless campaign in Ukraine, he was instrumental in overthrowing him and installing Kosygin as Russian president following the costly war. Duncan has no problem cozying up to Rotenberg's wife, Emily, who sadly has bought into a miserable, abusive marriage she can't escape for fear of having her husband claim their two children. Lyndsey's increasing sympathy for Emily, for whom a betrayal by her new best friend likely would be a traumatic last straw, becomes a problem—especially when it appears that Lyndsey is making herself available to the loathsome oligarch. Katsu, a former intelligence officer, shows us how intelligence-gathering works, how spies relate to each other, how intelligence agencies uneasily coexist. What sets the novel apart even more is the smoothness with which the author builds her tense narrative and characters—Lyndsey is unflashy but sensitive and principled and good at what she does, while Emily is one of the most sympathetically drawn victims in recent spy fiction.
A strong second installment in a series we hope continues.Pub Date: March 14, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-42195-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
As an adjunct member says, “You’re not a family, you’re a force.” Exactly, though not in the way you’d expect.
The ne’er-do-well son of a successful Irish American family gets dragged into criminal complications that suggest the rest of the Devlins aren’t exactly the upstanding citizens they appear.
The first 35 years in the life of Thomas “TJ” Devlin have been one disappointment after another to his parents, lawyers who founded a prosperous insurance and reinsurance firm, and his more successful siblings, John and Gabby. A longtime alcoholic who’s been unemployable ever since he did time for an incident involving his ex-girlfriend Carrie’s then 2-year-old daughter, TJ is nominally an investigator for Devlin & Devlin, but everyone knows the post is a sinecure. Things change dramatically when golden-boy John tells TJ that he just killed Neil Lemaire, an accountant for D&D client Runstan Electronics. Their speedy return to the murder scene reveals no corpse, so the brothers breathe easier—until Lemaire turns up shot to death in his car. John’s way of avoiding anything that might jeopardize his status as heir apparent to D&D is to throw TJ under the bus, blaming him for everything John himself has done and adding that you can’t trust anything his brother has said since he’s fallen off the wagon. TJ, who’s maintained his sobriety a day at a time for nearly two years, feels outraged, but neither the police investigating the murder nor his nearest and dearest care about his feelings. Forget the forgettable mystery, whose solution will leave you shrugging instead of gasping, and focus on the circular firing squad of the Devlins, and you’ll have a much better time than TJ.
As an adjunct member says, “You’re not a family, you’re a force.” Exactly, though not in the way you’d expect.Pub Date: March 26, 2024
ISBN: 9780525539704
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
Turow clearly had fun writing this one, and his fans will have fun reading it.
A private eye aids a police chief whose knickers may be in a twist.
In Highland Isle, Chief Lucia “Lucy” Gomez is accused of forcing a subordinate to have sex with her in exchange for his promotion to sergeant before his retirement. Unfortunately for the chief, there is a lurid photograph. But wait, she says, it must be Photoshopped. That can't be her. Well, we'll see about that. She's a “good police chief,” an attorney says. “But power corrupts. And she's turned her officers into her pool boys.” If a civil hearing determines that she’s been “bringing home guys who were under [her] command,” those knickers are well and truly twisted. Doing research on her behalf is the narrator, Clarice "Pinky" Granum, a 33-year-old ace investigator who works for the chief's lawyer, Rik Dudek. Gomez is a strong character, but she’s nothing like Pinky, the granddaughter of Sandy Stern, who has been a recurring character in Turow’s novels. Sandy is now in his mid-80s and in assisted living, where Pinky comes to visit. Pinky is a bisexual “inked-up chick” with a nail in her nose, and her ex-girlfriend is a “lumbersexual” cop named Tonya. Sandy is cool with all that as long as Pinky takes out the nail and wears long sleeves when necessary. She's very athletic, was once a police cadet, and is happy to be a “queerdo.” And wouldn't you know, she lives next door to a guy she calls The Weird One, or TWO, who she becomes convinced is a spy. Anyway, she’s skeptical about the chief forcing sex on a guy. “She's a woman, Boss. Men still hate it when a female does what she wants with her body. These dudes' stories make no sense." And then a witness named Blanco dies, raising the stakes. Did the chief have him whacked? Or maybe it was TWO, who is a Hmong guy named Koob, or a superrich ex-cop real estate mogul nicknamed the Ritz. Pinky and her colorful cohorts are the book's main appeal, but readers wanting gunplay won’t be disappointed.
Turow clearly had fun writing this one, and his fans will have fun reading it.Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5-387-0632-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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