Still, Alan Furst can breathe easy. Rosenheim’s story has its merits, but it’s slack, too full of banter, and not full...
Junior G-man Jimmy Nessheim graduates to the big time, and the Gestapo and NKVD alike are taking notice.
Why is it that Nessheim was sniffing around Pearl Harbor just before the bombs fell? Readers of Rosenheim’s other books (The Little Tokyo Informant, 2013, etc.) will have an idea but not Nessheim’s law school prof, an ungenial professor Kingsley with an amplitude of snark; no, in the hallowed halls of the University of Chicago, “his presence there, on the day the Japanese attacked, wouldn’t have been believed.” In similar spirit, it’s a little tough to figure that Nessheim, not so very high up in the FBI’s great chain of being, should be hanging around with the likes of Enrico Fermi and Leslie Groves at the dawn of the Manhattan Project, but there it is. Rosenheim being a student of genre conventions, it’s natural that a moll should figure in the proceedings. This one, possessed of a voice “smoky and low” and great gams—think Lauren Bacall—is more interesting than most, but anyone who’s read Dashiell Hammett or especially Raymond Chandler has met her before. Sneers said prof, “Fortunately, she’s a smart girl, even if her previous record here was not what anyone would call outstanding. Still, it seems better for her to be occupied and out of harm’s way than hanging around with a bunch of Jewish Communists in Hollywood.” Take that, J. Edgar! The bad guys are plentiful in Rosenheim’s tale, running the gamut from the German-American Bund goons of predecessor volume Fear Itself (2012) to homegrown members of the Communist Party; naturally, there are those in the Bureau who offer impediments of their own. Rosenheim is good on period details, and the history lines up; it’s also fair to say that the ultimate bad guy isn’t necessarily the one the reader might expect, thanks to deft handling of a red herring or two.
Still, Alan Furst can breathe easy. Rosenheim’s story has its merits, but it’s slack, too full of banter, and not full enough of car chases, explosions, and dead Nazis to satisfy.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4683-0935-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that...
Twenty-four years after a traumatic disappearance tore a Georgia family apart, Slaughter’s scorching stand-alone picks them up and shreds them all over again.
The Carrolls have never been the same since 19-year-old Julia vanished. After years of fruitlessly pestering the police, her veterinarian father, Sam, killed himself; her librarian mother, Helen, still keeps the girl's bedroom untouched, just in case. Julia’s sisters have been equally scarred. Lydia Delgado has sold herself for drugs countless times, though she’s been clean for years now; Claire Scott has just been paroled after knee-capping her tennis partner for a thoughtless remark. The evening that Claire’s ankle bracelet comes off, her architect husband, Paul, is callously murdered before her eyes and, without a moment's letup, she stumbles on a mountainous cache of snuff porn. Paul’s business partner, Adam Quinn, demands information from Claire and threatens her with dire consequences if she doesn’t deliver. The Dunwoody police prove as ineffectual as ever. FBI agent Fred Nolan is more suavely menacing than helpful. So Lydia and Claire, who’ve grown so far apart that they’re virtual strangers, are unwillingly thrown back on each other for help. Once she’s plunged you into this maelstrom, Slaughter shreds your own nerves along with those of the sisters, not simply by a parade of gruesome revelations—though she supplies them in abundance—but by peeling back layer after layer from beloved family members Claire and Lydia thought they knew. The results are harrowing.
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that she makes most of her high-wire competition look pallid, formulaic, or just plain fake.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-242905-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally...
Yale’s secret societies hide a supernatural secret in this fantasy/murder mystery/school story.
Most Yale students get admitted through some combination of impressive academics, athletics, extracurriculars, family connections, and donations, or perhaps bribing the right coach. Not Galaxy “Alex” Stern. The protagonist of Bardugo’s (King of Scars, 2019, etc.) first novel for adults, a high school dropout and low-level drug dealer, Alex got in because she can see dead people. A Yale dean who's a member of Lethe, one of the college’s famously mysterious secret societies, offers Alex a free ride if she will use her spook-spotting abilities to help Lethe with its mission: overseeing the other secret societies’ occult rituals. In Bardugo’s universe, the “Ancient Eight” secret societies (Lethe is the eponymous Ninth House) are not just old boys’ breeding grounds for the CIA, CEOs, Supreme Court justices, and so on, as they are in ours; they’re wielders of actual magic. Skull and Bones performs prognostications by borrowing patients from the local hospital, cutting them open, and examining their entrails. St. Elmo’s specializes in weather magic, useful for commodities traders; Aurelian, in unbreakable contracts; Manuscript goes in for glamours, or “illusions and lies,” helpful to politicians and movie stars alike. And all these rituals attract ghosts. It’s Alex’s job to keep the supernatural forces from embarrassing the magical elite by releasing chaos into the community (all while trying desperately to keep her grades up). “Dealing with ghosts was like riding the subway: Do not make eye contact. Do not smile. Do not engage. Otherwise, you never know what might follow you home.” A townie’s murder sets in motion a taut plot full of drug deals, drunken assaults, corruption, and cover-ups. Loyalties stretch and snap. Under it all runs the deep, dark river of ambition and anxiety that at once powers and undermines the Yale experience. Alex may have more reason than most to feel like an imposter, but anyone who’s spent time around the golden children of the Ivy League will likely recognize her self-doubt.
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally dazzling sequels.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-31307-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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