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SENECA SPEAKS

PART II: CAPITAL IDEA

An intricate drama offering a critical view of political self-interest.

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A freshman U.S. senator contends with his former mentor’s plan to launch an alternative currency in this second installment of Spencer’s thriller series.

Ethan Scott, in his New York City office as a rising leader of the Citizens’ Mandamus Council, is surprised to get a visit from U.S. Sens. Hubert Riley and John Stanton. These men are the type of suspect power brokers that CMC seeks to expose, but Ethan ultimately decides to accept their offer to appoint him to a vacant Senate seat, musing to himself, “If I possessed their influence, I could do so much more.” He advances at a fast clip in the Senate and the “Bone Yard” of Washington, D.C., gaining majority leader status and the pro tempore post. These promotions are largely brought about via Riley’s evil maneuverings as he seeks to lure Ethan into the world of secret favors and corruption. Meanwhile, CMC founder David Samuel, disheartened and angry about a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit against his organization, announces his intention to offer a new type of currency and force a special election to drive out the current Congress. Ethan also struggles with his love-hate relationship with opportunistic lobbyist Anne Preston, who works for one of two major oil barons funding terrorists as part of their domination of the energy market. News anchor Abigail Sanders also renews contact with Ethan, with whom she shares history and mutual attraction. By novel’s end, several players are dethroned, tortured, or die, and Ethan is mobilized to rejoin CMC in part by revelations by mysterious D.C. homeless man Seneca.

Spencer ambitiously weaves many threads into this multilayered tale of rampant, interconnected malfeasance. Some elements, such as a government bill connected to a space mission, are rather sketchy and digressive even if there will be more to come on such topics in future series installments. Seneca, a minor-character sage without a home, is rather surprisingly hurriedly hustled out of D.C. early on, and it’s left unclear when (or if) this eponymous character will return to this series. Most significantly, characters’ belief in CMC as a noble crusading force is a bit problematic given its huge endowment, its willingness to create havoc by manipulating the use of money, and David’s egotistical rage and despair. The most compelling and successful aspect of this novel is the depiction of Ethan’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington–like year as a senator. Here, Spencer provides plenty of sadly astute and sometimes-amusing commentary, including Ethan’s wry realization that politicians’ seeming inability to get anything done may be intentional. Ethan’s attraction to Anne, introduced in the previous book, continues to have a noirish appeal, with some intriguing new dimensions provided about her underlying pain. Spencer also sprinkles some metaphysical flavor into the mix, beginning and ending the book with key characters haunted by a menacing, armored figure—if only, perhaps, in their own minds. These existential elements will whet readers’ interest in what’s to come: an apparent apocalyptic showdown between good and evil. An intricate drama offering a critical view of political self-interest.

Pub Date: March 1, 2023

ISBN: 9798985773507

Page Count: 426

Publisher: Spencer Publishing & Media

Review Posted Online: June 20, 2023

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A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.

A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

Pub Date: March 17, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020

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BEAUTIFUL UGLY

“Nasty little fellows…always get their comeuppance,” a movie character once said. Deeply satisfying.

Following the mysterious disappearance of his wife, a struggling London novelist journeys to a remote Scottish island to try to get his mojo back—but all, of course, is not what it seems.

Grady Green hits the pinnacle of his publishing career on the same night that his life goes off the rails—first his book lands on the New York Times bestseller list, and then his wife, Abby, goes missing on her way home. A year later, Grady is a mere shadow of his former self: out of money and out of ideas. So, when his agent, Abby’s godmother, suggests that he spend some time on the Isle of Amberly, in a log cabin left to her by one of her writers, it seems as good a plan as any. With free housing for himself and his dog and a beautiful, distraction-free environment, maybe he can finally complete the next novel. But from the very beginning, Grady’s experiences with Amberly seem weird, if not downright ominous: As a visitor, he’s not allowed to bring his car onto the island; the local businesses are only open for a few hours at a time; and there are no birds. At all. Not to mention the skeletal hand he finds buried under the floorboards of the cabin, the creepy harmonica music in the woods, and the occasional sighting of a woman in a red coat who’s a dead ringer for Abby. As Grady falls deeper and deeper into insomnia and alcoholism, he begins to realize his being on the island is no accident—and that should make him very afraid. Through occasional chapters from before Abby’s disappearance, told from her point of view, we learn that Grady is not necessarily a reliable narrator, and the book’s slow unfolding of dread, mystery, and then truth is both creative and well-paced. Every chapter heading is an oxymoron, like the title, reminding us of the contradictions at the heart of every story.

“Nasty little fellows…always get their comeuppance,” a movie character once said. Deeply satisfying.

Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025

ISBN: 9781250337788

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Flatiron Books

Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2024

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