Strong, skillful female warriors headline this rousing sequel.
A computer geek teams up with a black ops group to recover superconductive material in this second installment of a thriller series.
After spotting an intruder in her San Francisco loft, Maddy Marshall first protects 10-year-old AJ, the boy she hopes to adopt. Unfortunately, the culprit absconds with the ancient star chart she had been keeping safe. This chart may be the key to recovering a superconductive meteorite, which would fuel a quantum computer. As the thief may have been Russian, it’s a national security risk since the Russians would likely use such a computer for an American invasion. Alfred Bowman, director of VanOps, assigns Maddy’s boyfriend, Bear Thorenson, to find the meteorite as well as investigate the possibly related murder of an Indian ambassador. Joining Bear are VanOps members Jarmilla “Jags” Agiashvili and Maddy’s twin, Will Argones. Maddy becomes part of the team, too. Though only a civilian, she has an aikido black belt and belongs to the Order of the Invisible Flame, an ancient sect of royal spies that her family founded. This mission necessitates enlisting the help of archeoastronomer Anu Kumar; deciphering hieroglyphics on an important relic that Maddy possesses; and dodging tenacious assassins. Maddy and Jags are delightfully capable and convincingly vulnerable characters. But while the two women’s combat scenes are exhilarating, the story ultimately turns into a series of seemingly endless assaults or assassination attempts the team must face. Nevertheless, the final act is decidedly more intense while the brisk narrative traverses the globe to such places as Turkey, Egypt, and Africa. Centrae provides Maddy with numerous dilemmas, as she debates an offer to officially join VanOps (she’s concerned it would put AJ in persistent danger) and deals with Bear’s envy over her ex-fiance, Vincent, who, to some extent, is still in her life.
Strong, skillful female warriors headline this rousing sequel. (author’s notes, acknowledgements, author bio)Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73496-625-1
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Thunder Creek Press
Review Posted Online: July 7, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Riske is still Riske, and the automotive world is still the better for it.
Simon Riske drives again but not as fast.
Plying his ostensible trade as a restorer of sexy European sports cars, freelance spy Riske is in California shepherding a classic Ferrari through an auction. The car sells for $102 million, a record, and everyone is happy. Well, not everyone. The restoration did not include a critical piece of original equipment, for the very good reason that the piece was lost. But suddenly the buyer, Sylvie Bettencourt, receives news that the piece does exist, and she demands Riske find it and complete the restoration. Of course it's not that easy. Riske and his team had already scoured the mechanical world for the piece, and though they resume the search, there are no new leads. As a sidebar to the search for the gearbox, Riske researched Bettencourt and learned she was a major player in the process of laundering the fortunes of Russian oligarchs. Then Bettencourt blackmails Riske into helping her steal back some money she claims her superior has taken, and Riske becomes a mole spying on Bettencourt. In a further plot development, Carl Bildt, a Danish banker who managed the accounts Bettencourt services, is murdered, and his daughter Anna undertakes to find the killers. With Riske unraveling the oligarchical knot from the Bettencourt end and Anna pursuing her father's killers, the extent of the laundering scheme is revealed. But these are Russian fortunes, and there is the obligatory presence of hulking violent enforcers, callous ultrarich misogynists, and even a teasing pirouette by Novichok, a nerve agent. Riske is a raffish rogue, ready to ride or preferably drive a Ferrari in whatever quixotic enterprise presents itself, but in this adventure he is somewhat subdued—still irresistible, still a seasoned street fighter, but somehow less visceral. Intricately plotted, the novel reaches a climax that is somewhat surprising yet disappointing, as if the magician had pulled a mouse from his hat.
Riske is still Riske, and the automotive world is still the better for it.Pub Date: April 5, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-316-45609-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Mulholland Books/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
BOOK TO SCREEN
High marks for this one. Let’s hope it’s the beginning of a long series.
Elephants and humans alike face mortal danger in this tense, complex thriller set in Africa.
Tom Klay is an American journalist in Kenya who writes about crimes against endangered species for the National Geographic–like magazine The Sovereign. Because of an earlier article he’d written, a ranger friend tells Klay, “everyone wants to see our famous elephant,” Kenya’s largest. That’s good for tourism, but now criminals want to kill the heavily protected animal and “smuggle his tusks to China whole.” Notorious poacher Ras Botha runs Africa’s ivory trade and considers elephants mere “property” to be hunted at will. “An elephant is carrying two gravestones,” Klay is told: “One for himself. One for his species.” Gravestones are needed for people as well, as Botha takes violent exception to human interference. Klay is a multilayered character who grew up in a funeral home and is well enough acquainted with death to muse that life is an unwinnable case and that “hope was certainty’s flirtatious cousin.” He tells his lover, the wonderfully named career South African prosecutor Hungry Khoza, that he’s not a good person because he’d caused a child’s death in Indonesia. His magazine’s editor-in-chief ropes Klay into moonlighting for the CIA. Then Perseus Group Media, a subsidiary of the “world’s biggest private military company” and China’s overseas security firm, buys out Klay’s financially struggling employer. By the way, China’s “Ultimate Silk Road Project” includes a planned highway through the heart of Kenya. There’s also a treasonous U.S. Navy admiral caught in a “little sex ring” and a pedophile ivory trafficker who is also a peace negotiator. The child sex trafficking theme might have been developed further or omitted altogether, but readers will sense its pervasiveness. The author’s experience as a special investigator for National Geographic informs this fast-moving debut novel.
High marks for this one. Let’s hope it’s the beginning of a long series.Pub Date: April 13, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-18792-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
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