A cumbersome plot weighs down this would-be spy thriller.
Twin sisters find themselves caught up in a Russian spy ring at the height of the Cold War.
In 1952, Ruth Macallister, a former fashion model and the power behind the throne at a Manhattan modeling agency, receives a postcard from her twin sister, Iris Digby—sent from Moscow. When FBI man and former Yale fullback Sumner Fox comes sniffing around, Ruth at first withholds this information, but later the two will team up, pretending to be newlyweds, to go to Moscow with the intent of extracting Iris from the clutches of the Stalin regime. Or at least that’s Ruth’s intent—Sumner’s mixed motives are a source of more confusion than intrigue. The 1952 sections, narrated by Ruth, alternate with Iris’ story, set in 1948 Great Britain, detailing how her marriage is foundering. She always knew her husband, Sasha Digby, was a spy for the Russians, a mole embedded in the U.S. diplomatic corps. Lately, however, his drunkenness appears to have rendered him all but useless to his handlers. Iris met Sasha during the sisters’ prewar Roman holiday in 1940 and, infatuated, married him in haste. Sasha’s frequent all-night benders have definitely debloomed the rose. The 1948 narrative slows down the present action without really adding much crucial insight into how, or why, Sasha and Iris end up defecting, with their children, to Moscow or even why, after his poor performance, Moscow would want him. Making occasional appearances in the 1952 timeline is Lyudmila Ivanova, a tough-as-nails KGB operative and a single mother due to her informing on her husband, who was sent to the gulag. He’s not the only family member she’s turned in. Lyudmila has been assigned to monitor expat defectors like Sasha. Iris is the most fully developed and sympathetic character here. Ruth is another iteration of the wisecracking dame who has appeared in so many Williams novels, and Lyudmila seems patterned after Greta Garbo in Ninotchka, except that this doctrinaire minion of Stalin wouldn’t be caught dead in a rom-com.
A cumbersome plot weighs down this would-be spy thriller.Pub Date: June 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-302078-8
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2021
A standout in the series.
The sixth adventure of Harvard symbology professor Robert Langdon explores the mysteries of human consciousness, the demonic projects of the CIA, and the city of Prague.
“Ladies and gentlemen...we are about to experience a sea change in our understanding of how the brain works, the nature of consciousness, and in fact…the very nature of reality itself.” But first—Langdon’s in love! Brown’s devoted readers first met brilliant noetic scientist Katherine Solomon in The Lost Symbol (2009); she’s back as a serious girlfriend, engaging the committed bachelor in a way not seen before. The book opens with the pair in a luxurious suite at the Four Seasons in Prague. It’s the night after Katherine has delivered the lecture quoted above, setting the theme for the novel, which features a plethora of real-life cases and anomalies that seem to support the notion that human consciousness is not localized inside the human skull. Brown’s talent for assembling research is also evident in this novel’s alter ego as a guidebook to Prague, whose history and attractions are described in great and glowing detail. Whether you appreciate or skim past the innumerable info dumps on these and other topics (Jewish folklore fans—the Golem is in the house!), it goes without saying that concision is not a goal in the Dan Brown editing process. Speaking of editing, the nearly 700-page book is dedicated to Brown’s editor, who seems to appear as a character—to put it in the italicized form used for Brownian insight, Jason Kaufman must be Jonas Faukman! A major subplot involves the theft of Katherine’s manuscript from the secure servers of Penguin Random House; the delightful Faukman continues to spout witty wisecracks even when blindfolded and hogtied. There’s no shortage of action, derring-do, explosions, high-tech torture machines, attempted and successful murders, and opportunities for split-second, last-minute escapes; good thing Langdon, this aging symbology wonk, never misses swimming his morning laps. Readers who are not already dyed-in-the-wool Langdonites may find themselves echoing the prof’s own conclusion regarding the credibility of all this paranormal hoo-ha: At some point, skepticism itself becomes irrational.
A standout in the series.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9780385546898
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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