An improbable tale that delivers cheesy action-adventure fun, despite its drawbacks.
Members of an elite, covert anti-terrorist squad reunite to rescue one of their own from the world’s deadliest terrorist in this thriller.
English nobleman Harrington Lloyd-Creighton assembles the far-flung members of his InterOps team to rescue Stewart Savage, a former colleague who’s been captured by Alexander Shaitan, head of the International Organization for Terrorist Aggression, “an organization of vast proportions, larger than most international conglomerates, spread across the globe and into everything.” Shaitan is holding Savage prisoner in a labyrinthine, subterranean island fortress that features a giant, carnivorous lizard that’s unleashed on unfortunate prisoners. Lloyd-Creighton’s initially all-male international team includes an Australian, an Asian, a Scot, a Frenchman, a German, and an American whose surname is a German word for “avenger.” Shaitan had previously shattered each of their lives by sponsoring attacks that claimed loved ones. Even as they mount their rescue, they expect that their nemesis is using Savage as bait to trap them. Lambert’s debut novel is the literary equivalent of a 1980s direct-to-video action-adventure, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Those films were rife with clichés, bad acting, and ham-handed dialogue, but they were also lively fun. This story similarly hits the ground running as Savage tries to elude his pursuers through “miles upon miles of tunnels, cool corridors.” Shaitan is an urbane, suitably hissable villain, even if the banter Lambert writes for him isn’t very strong (“Go to hell,” says Savage. “All in due time, I’m sure,” responds Shaitan). Other terrorists tend to speak in stereotypical ways: “That was the wrong answer, infidel,” says one Iranian assassin. “Where are your pig-friends?” The book’s exposition can also be clunky and repetitive, as in the opening scene: “LABYRINTH. An entire terrorist organization built into a labyrinth that was more than two thousand years old….It was a labyrinth beneath the tiny island’s jungle surface.” That said, Lambert effectively propels the story forward, staging outrageous action set pieces that may be absurd, but are never boring.
An improbable tale that delivers cheesy action-adventure fun, despite its drawbacks.Pub Date: Dec. 2, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4969-4847-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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
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