Army of God

Name: Army of God
Author: Bill Hartnett
ISBN: 978-1-62217-720-2

by Bill Hartnett ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 28, 2016

Resonant characters deciphering a puzzle involving artifacts generate an absorbing tale even if readers already know where...

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In Hartnett’s debut thriller, an American cop and an Interpol agent scour Europe to verify a potential link between alleged suicides and stolen relics.

Angie Anderson’s seven-year marriage to husband and fellow Stanford professor Andy is full of romantic gestures, like Angie surprising him with his favorite meal. So she’s understandably shocked when police officers arrive at her door claiming Andy’s taken a dive off the Golden Gate Bridge—based on the suicide note left in his abandoned car. This is remarkably similar to what happened with Denver detective Caleb Mathews’ father 15 years earlier, only his dad’s newly dead body just showed up in Amsterdam. Caleb suspects someone’s kidnapped Andy to replace his father, both in the field of bioengineering. It’s a wild speculation, but Angie sees its validity, further surmising that the abduction and murder have something to do with pilfered relics, both over a decade ago and more recently in the Netherlands and Turkey. Caleb and Angie meet in Dublin with Angie’s former roommate, Siobhan Callahan, now with Interpol. They connect other scientists’ questionable suicides with pinched relics, all relating to saints and spanning various countries. The group amasses a plethora of clues, from missing women to chemicals used to render guards unconscious, to find Andy and his abductors. An early introduction to the villains leaves little mystery, but the baddies prove as riveting as the good guys. Caleb and Angie, for starters, get plenty of help, namely from Siobhan’s dad, Tippy, who’s no longer with Interpol but still excels in the field. Billionaire Gabriel Papadakis, meanwhile, who’s unmistakably spearheading the thefts and disappearances, has a rather chilling employee turnover. Subordinate Lucas Weber, on account of his larceny accompanied by excessive killing, may be up for termination, while probable replacement Viktoria busily recruits lackeys. Papadakis’ outlandish purpose, too, revealed before the halfway point, is a doozy. A few scenes with Caleb and Siobhan, involving her other, unrelated case or Caleb teaching her to ride a horse, are extraneous. These moments certainly foster the couple’s personal and professional relationship, but so does their plot-relevant trek from Austria to Moscow—with more subtlety and brevity.

Resonant characters deciphering a puzzle involving artifacts generate an absorbing tale even if readers already know where the pieces go.

Pub Date: April 28, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-62217-720-2

Page Count: 772

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Dec. 1, 2016

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.

Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.

Pub Date: March 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-609-60737-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

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Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.