An astutely conveyed and genuinely engrossing story weighed down by too many details about a complex business deal.
In this financial thriller, a Vancouver banker inadvertently stumbles into the cross hairs of a Chinese criminal empire.
Neil Mohle serves as the principal banker on a massive business deal that connects a Vancouver company, Woodstock LNG, with “Chinese state-owned offshore energy group partners” to build a liquefied natural gas plant in British Columbia. The complicated arrangement is nearly derailed by a government demand for local equity, but a Vancouver firm, Monger Capital, offers to help without any board representation in exchange. But Neil struggles to vet Monger Capital, which has largely flown under the radar of regulatory attention. A fateful conversation changes all that as well as his life. His wife, Vivian, overhears an exchange in her salon in which she learns that her client Kitty Lee is the daughter of billionaire Quon Jin Hu. He owns a considerable stake in Monger Capital and turns out to be the infamous Komodo, the head of a shadowy Chinese criminal organization. When the notoriously secretive Quon discovers his daughter’s indiscretion, he puts contracts out on both Neil’s and Vivian’s lives, and they are forced to disappear to survive. Meanwhile, Hayden Jones, an officer with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, works his way into the “inner circle” of British Columbia Premier Dana Holmes, investigating Chinese money laundering. His mission takes a new turn when the Mohles become targets for assassination. Bentley (The Bermuda Key, 2015, etc.) meticulously weaves an impressively intricate plot brimming with nuance and intelligence. In addition, the story is as clever as it is suspenseful—the author intriguingly demonstrates the way in which a causal conversation can have profoundly fateful ramifications. But he lingers far too long—and with microscopic specificity—on the minute details of the financial agreement that sets the whole tale in motion. Readers can’t help but feel at times that they are passive witnesses to a very long board meeting. For those who find the machinations of such transactions captivating, or at least can muster some measure of tolerance for them, their patience will be well rewarded by an otherwise gripping tale.
An astutely conveyed and genuinely engrossing story weighed down by too many details about a complex business deal.Pub Date: April 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5255-4859-8
Page Count: 330
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: July 10, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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