An extremely confident debut that’s face-paced and full of surprises.
Mackin’s debut novel is a detailed historical thriller with a familiar and compelling premise—a labyrinthine plot to kill Hitler.
In Mackin’s book, as early as 1934, a British special ops unit “has been working to put in place an agent capable of eliminating the present head of the German Reich….For the most part, private monies have funded the project. It has never been an official enterprise of His Majesty’s government.” But Churchill and Roosevelt are both in on it, as are some industrialists, members of the military, street thugs and numerous spies. Readers are introduced to an enormous cast of characters and their real and putative backgrounds beginning in the early 1900s, including scenes set in Gallipoli, Manhattan’s Yorkville, London mansions and the Belgian Congo. The conspirators were playing out a very long game: After selecting their assassin in 1934, the attempt isn’t launched until June 21, 1941, on the eve of Germany’s invasion of Russia, code-named Barbarossa. The historical environment is rich with factual embellishments. Readers are treated to imagined, in-depth conversations between Bormann, Himmler and Rommel, as well as Hitler, Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt. The expansive depth and breadth of Mackin’s historical knowledge enables him to incorporate competing German military strategies into this series of Byzantine plot twists. Nobody is who he purports to be, and relatively minor events ripple through the story and eventually gain significance. Despite its dense plotting, assumption of substantial World War II knowledge and its 500-plus pages, the book hums along at a brisk pace. Even with the total certainty that this long-planned assassination of Hitler will not be successful, the anticipation and excitement is palpable. Occasional awkward spots could be smoother, such as a 1937 meeting at a Madrid bar between a certain writer and a physician and his wife from New York: “My name is Ernest, Ernest Hemingway,” to which the wife responds, “We know your work. I’ve read A Farewell to Arms and loved it, especially Catherine Barkley, the nurse.”
An extremely confident debut that’s face-paced and full of surprises.Pub Date: Nov. 21, 2013
ISBN: 978-1491207567
Page Count: 514
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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