Lurid, if not original.
In this testosterone rampage, a super-studly master thief pulls off gonzo caper in post-Soviet Russia.
Having absorbed every cliché of Bond-knockoff tale-telling—the outsize villains, the world-weary cynicism, the sexy girl—debut novelist Ghelfi breathlessly parlays them all again. The girl is comely Valya, whom protagonist Volk (the name means “wolf”) meets cute as a “mud-masked Chechen fighter dwarfed by the smoking Kalashnikov she carried.” Volk is a “Special Forces wunderkind” who loses a leg in combat after weathering five years of the “assault of rapists, skin-fillet artists, flesh-burning pyromaniacs, and other assorted torturers.” The former foes become squeezes and then a sort of Hart-to-Hart on amphetamines: boy/girl desperadoes. Guns for hire, they’re enlisted by rival Very Bad Guys. Their mission impossible is to break into the Hermitage, St. Petersburg’s ultra-secure treasure trove of big-name artworks. Under a canvas by the obscure Pierre Mignard, a stunner has been discovered—one of the 15 paintings actually done by Leonardo, the only artist—since the canonization of Dan Brown—of whom popular entertainment knows the existence. Volk/Valya have to nab it. Moonlighting from his day job of manufacturing porno, Volk constructs a head-spinningly elaborate game plan, requiring Valya’s “renting an ancient four-seat Moscvitch, two Lambretta scooters, and a skiff, buying secondhand clothes and scuba gear, and arranging drop points.” Predictable betrayals, sex scenes and violence ensue.
Lurid, if not original.Pub Date: June 12, 2007
ISBN: 0-8050-8254-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2007
Art forgery! False identities! Adultery! Murder! But in the end, sadly, it’s more melodrama than true thriller.
When a skull is discovered in the lake by a manor house, a 30-year-old mystery comes to light.
When Jo’s husband dies suddenly, she reluctantly brings her 10-year-old daughter, Ruby, home to Lake Hall. Despite the seeming affluence of her aristocratic family, Jo’s memories of her childhood are mostly unhappy, especially after her beloved nanny, Hannah, left under mysterious circumstances. Despite her mother’s frosty warnings, Jo takes Ruby out on the lake one day, and they unearth a human skull. The detective who comes to investigate has a chip on his shoulder about the upper class and would like nothing better than to prove the village rumors that the Holt family has casually disposed of inconvenient bodies throughout the years. Jo’s mother knows exactly to whom the skull belongs—and she wants to keep the truth from Jo as long as possible. Jo herself suspects it might belong to Hannah, who never would have left her voluntarily—but then suddenly, out of the blue, a handsome older woman turns up on their doorstep, claiming to be Hannah. No one is quite sure what to believe, but Jo, desperately wanting to rekindle the closeness she once had with Hannah and chafing against the coldness of her mother, invites the woman into her home to help care for Ruby—a mistake, we know, of catastrophic proportions. Macmillan (I Know You Know, 2018, etc.) strives to create a gothic atmosphere, but the setting falls short of true creepiness. Her decision to switch narrators does add layers to the story, but the voices all seem to tell more than they show, and no character is sympathetic enough, or charismatic enough, to really draw the reader into the mystery.
Art forgery! False identities! Adultery! Murder! But in the end, sadly, it’s more melodrama than true thriller.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-287555-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Cancel your plans for the weekend when you sit down with this book, because you won’t want to move until it’s over.
Suspense queen Ware's (The Woman in Cabin 10, 2016, etc.) third novel in three years introduces four women who have been carrying a terrible secret since their boarding school days, a secret that is about to be literally unearthed.
Isa Wilde, happy in her life as a new mother, receives a text one morning that simply reads, I need you, and hours later, she boards a train bound for the coastal village of Salten with her infant daughter in tow. She has come at her friend Kate’s summons, and soon they are joined by two other women who received the same text, Thea and Fatima. Fifteen years earlier, all four were best friends at Salten House, sneaking off campus on the weekends to spend time with Kate’s father, an art teacher, and her handsome, mysterious brother, Luc. Their school days ended in tragedy and scandal, however, and the four haven’t been back to Salten since they were expelled. Now, a bone has been found in the marshes, and Kate has called the others back in a panic. They know more about the body than they should, but even they don’t know the truth. Ware’s third outing is just as full of psychological suspense as her earlier books, but there is a quietness about this one, a slower unraveling of tension and fear, that elevates it above her others. Though there's still a fair dash of drama, it doesn’t veer into the realm of melodrama, developing consistently with the characters and with their personalities and pasts. Isa is a sympathetic narrative voice though her obsession with the concerns of new parenthood may put some readers off.
Cancel your plans for the weekend when you sit down with this book, because you won’t want to move until it’s over.Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5600-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Scout Press/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
