An exciting and richly-detailed thriller set just before the fall of the Soviet Union.
Soviet, American, Israeli, and French military and defense strategists race against the clock to prevent the detonation of a stolen nuclear weapon in Meslin’s thriller.
On August 27, 1991, a vicious battle erupts in the city of Tiraspol in Transnistria, an eastern region in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Moldavia. It’s the latest in a series of clashes between ethnically Romanian Moldavian nationalists and Russia-backed Transnistrian separatists seeking independence. This particular skirmish is notably different than past ones—both sides are heavily armed with military-grade weapons, and more casualties are reported, including more than 200 civilians. Even more importantly, a secure armory in Tiraspol is breached and a nuclear weapon is stolen. In an anonymous phone call to Aleksandr Miyokan, the defense attache in the USSR’s embassy in Paris, it’s revealed that the Moldavian Democratic Front is behind the theft. The MDF has a list of demands: Moldavian sovereignty, the withdrawal of all Soviet troops from Moldavia, an end to Russian support of the Transnistrian separatists, and a formalized union with Romania. Failure to meet these demands by September 2nd, the caller says, will result in the nuclear weapon being detonated in Paris. Under the strain of this looming deadline, military tacticians, defense strategists, and politicians from around the world—notably KGB officer Sergei Rostov, retired Mossad Deputy Director Dov Ma’alat, and Nuclear Emergency Search Team leader Peter Grantham—must find the stolen weapon and prevent nuclear catastrophe. Meslin’s debut novel is an action-packed thriller featuring a robust cast of characters contending with sky-high stakes. The author’s background in defense and national security shines through in his detailed descriptions of West Wing operations, global affairs, and weapons. (“…the Mercedes disappeared behind a fireball as an armor-piercing projectile easily penetrated the right rear passenger door one-tenth of a second before detonating.”) While the book is engaging and immersive, the prose is occasionally overly-explanatory and repetitive, and some readers may find that the third-person omniscient narrative approach eliminates some elements of mystery. Additionally, the most prominently featured female character, Maria Colline, feels underdeveloped, even though her role in the plot proves pivotal. Still, the story is plausible and compelling.
An exciting and richly-detailed thriller set just before the fall of the Soviet Union.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Nov. 6, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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