Conspiracies make for good reading, and this book could turn skeptics into believers.
A fast-moving tale of murder, deception and intrigue linked to George Washington's Culper Ring and its espionage descendants.
Beecher White works in the "nation's attic"—the U.S. National Archives. Dumped by his fiancé and thoroughly depressed, the young archivist's mood improves after he's contacted by Clementine Kaye, a young woman he's had a crush on since school days. Raised by a single mother, Clemmi wants to search the Archives records to help find her father. Beecher wants to impress Clemmi, and so, with the help of a friendly security guard, they make a surreptitious foray into a SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility), a secured room where presidents examine top-secret material. There they stumble upon a hidden antique dictionary, one possibly owned by Washington. Soon the guard turns up dead. Is the dictionary a code book once used by the Culper Ring, a group of double agents, spies and messengers organized to assist Washington in the republic's chaotic early days? Does the Ring still operate? Hints pop up that President Orson Wallace uses the SCIF to communicate with today's Ring members. The mystery grows to encompass the president's doctor and barber, other archivists and Clemmie's father, who is revealed to be Nico Hadrian, institutionalized as the attempted assassin of a former president. Hadrian, paranoid and violent, seems to know things about the Ring, and about "the inner circle," the ring-within-the-ring that some less-than-ethical presidents have used to shape history. Meltzer's chapters are short and cinematic, and the conclusion—some bad guys dead and buried, some not—suggests he plans a series.
Conspiracies make for good reading, and this book could turn skeptics into believers.Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-446-57789-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2010
Gardner tacks on so many twists that even the most astute reader will be confused, and even the intriguing resolution, when...
A New Hampshire cop tries to piece together a mysterious woman’s life following a car accident and discovers nothing is as it seems.
Gardner (Fear Nothing, 2014, etc.) puts Sgt. Wyatt Foster front and center in this overly complicated thriller, while corporate security expert—and Foster’s new girlfriend—Tessa Leoni, from the 2011 Love You More, plays a distant second fiddle. When Foster is called to a single-car accident on a rural road, it seems like driver Nicole Frank simply drank too much Scotch and drove off the road. But Nicole, who miraculously survives the crash, insists that her daughter, Vero, is still missing. Foster and his team launch a massive search until Nicole’s husband, Thomas, arrives at the hospital and tells the police that there is no child: Nicole suffered a traumatic brain injury (actually several), causing her to conjure an imaginary daughter. As the details of Nicole’s original injury—she suspiciously fell down both her basement and front stairs within the span of a few months—emerge, Foster and the reader become more, rather than less, confused. Nicole’s history unspools in calculated sound bites, with each episode ending in an artificial cliffhanger. According to Nicole—who claims to be “the woman who died twice”—she escaped a horrific childhood in a brothel known as the Dollhouse, a place that’s the nexus of the mystery surrounding Vero, who may or may not be a figment of her addled brain.
Gardner tacks on so many twists that even the most astute reader will be confused, and even the intriguing resolution, when it finally comes, doesn’t answer all the plot’s unnecessary questions.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-525-95456-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2014
At about 500 pages, this one is fat, fast, and fun. Clancy's spirit lives on.
The latest high-energy entry in the Gray Man series (Back Blast, 2016, etc.).
Courtland Gentry, also known as the Gray Man, is everything you’d want in a fictional professional killer. The CIA agent–turned-freelancer is still on America’s side, he’s deadly against superior odds, and he trots out a conscience now and then. The CIA sends Gentry to Hong Kong for an assignment that is "possibly the most important of his life," but he's soon kidnapped. Identifying himself to his captors as “just a hired hit man looking for work,” he isn’t in town a full day before he kills two Chinese intelligence operatives. Then he learns his true mission, finding a Chinese defector for the CIA. Gentry isn’t sure whether he’s rescuing or kidnapping Fan Jiang, but it doesn’t matter. Fan is an information technology specialist from Mainland China who wants to go to Taiwan. The CIA wants Fan because he knows “the Chinese secure networks inside and out,” Chinese intelligence wants him back for the same reason, and even Vietnamese soldiers and gangsters are in on the hunt. And there is Zoya Zakharova, the beautiful (of course) Russian foreign intelligence agent assigned to bring Fan Jiang to Russia. She’s Gentry’s one adversary who is his equal. The action is fast and complicated with bodies galore—all for a good cause, of course—and one literal cliffhanger. Author Greaney co-wrote several Tom Clancy novels, and this thriller is tailor-made for Clancy’s fans. The Gray Man’s character is several shades darker than Jack Ryan’s, though he lacks Ryan’s depth. But Gentry always gets the job done for the US of A, and he entertains while doing it. Whether he kills or beds Zakharova, readers will have to find out.
At about 500 pages, this one is fat, fast, and fun. Clancy's spirit lives on.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-425-28285-4
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2017
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