A thriller with a delightfully dense plot, although its protagonist has little opportunity to shine.
Well-known antiquities dealer Brian Sadler returns to help ensnare a man who may be involved in the crashes of Air Force One and Air Force Two in Thompson’s (Ghost Train: The Lost Gold of the Nazis, 2016, etc.) latest novel.
Air Force Two, with the vice president aboard, has dropped from radar. Then President Harry Harrison and others also go missing when Air Force One vanishes. The nation’s at DEFCON 1, and Speaker of the House Chambliss Parkes becomes the new acting president. After wreckage from Air Force One is found, Parkes declares the passengers from both aircraft dead from a presumed terrorist strike. The late president’s father, a former senator, asks TV personality and antiquities dealer Sadler, who knew the president well, to help find out what happened to the planes. Sadler soon agrees to perform a simple task for the CIA in London, where he meets up with Amina “Amy” Hassan, who’s on a CIA watch list along with her billionaire father, Amin. The situation is dire back in America, as Parkes barely acknowledges the Falcons of Islam, who claimed responsibility for the attack and say that they have sleeper agents in the United States. But the CIA fears that Sadler and his attorney fiancee, Nicole Farber, may be in more imminent danger, as Amin sent a killer to follow Sadler back to Dallas. Despite an early reveal of a significant player in the planes’ disappearances, the narrative retains a good deal of mystery, particularly regarding the top-secret Operation Condor. Thompson turns the spotlight on various characters, including people who are knowingly aiding the bad guys and at least one person who’s been tricked into doing so. Series regular Sadler, however, gets overshadowed in his own story, as he appears only sporadically; he’s essentially used by the CIA for his expertise and popularity, and later, as bait. Also, the book’s descriptions can be repetitive; Amy, for example, is often said to be “stunning.” However, the baddies’ plan, as well as the good guys’ strategy to fight back, are riveting, featuring varying motives and inevitable double crosses.
A thriller with a delightfully dense plot, although its protagonist has little opportunity to shine.Pub Date: June 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9964671-0-0
Page Count: 302
Publisher: Asdendente Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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