A stirring spy tale with two unforgettable protagonists.
In this thriller, a CIA operative’s simple reconnaissance job in Russia runs into complications while a former French intelligence agent gets the chance to stop a Nazi war criminal.
Following a successful operation in Afghanistan, Nathan Adamson of the CIA’s Special Operations Group is due for some downtime. But Adamson prefers working, as it keeps his mind off of “quitting”—recurrent thoughts of killing himself. So he accepts an offer from Tara Yarwick, a psychologist for the Joint Special Operations Command. Adamson is ideal for a proposed operation in Russia. He has Russian lineage and speaks the language. But the JSOC doesn’t quite know what it’s looking for, only that there’s questionable activity and rumors surrounding Russia’s new spaceport, Vostochny Cosmodrome. Unfortunately, Adamson’s assignment to find verification of whatever is going on has an unforeseen hurdle: Armed men suddenly attack him in Russia. An apparent JSOC leak has compromised the mission, and now Adamson has been targeted by enigmatic Russian agent Karambit and his hit squad, the Unit. Meanwhile, Sophia de Marenches, an aging French veteran whom Adamson regularly visits in a Virginia retirement home, has a dilemma. Having been a part of the Resistance during World War II and later French intelligence, Sophia recognizes on TV a Nazi who evaded capture after the war. She relays her suspicions to agents who stop by the home, or at least she thinks so, as her memory is unreliable. She needs Adamson’s help, but he’s busy in Russia, where he’s fairly certain he’s stumbled on plans for an invasion. Despite the elaborate plot, Huskins (Kinjin, 2017, etc.) concentrates the story on the captivating characters of Adamson and Sophia. The tale, for one, explores Adamson’s psychological state: He continually replays in his head the final pleas of a man he assassinated. Though this links to his oft-referenced desire to take his own life, there are also instances of hopefulness; another mental refrain is Sophia telling him, “Come back to me.” At the same time, the narrative provides perspective into Sophia’s constant struggle with remembering: “Already, I feel the memory of our meeting fading. It’s like fighting off sleep when you’ve been up more than twenty-four hours.” While the dual lead characters have their own distinctive qualities, they’re just as remarkable for their similarities. Elderly Sophia is near the end of her life while Adamson is looking to terminate his; it’s one of the multiple ways the novel slyly connects the two. Huskins keeps the plot moving with a steady supply of action scenes (primarily with Adamson) and myriad twists (the identity of the mole; surprising Russian technology; and the CIA agent’s unexpected ally). There are indeed occasional bouts of violence; watching someone intimidate the nearly 100-year-old Sophia is particularly daunting. But the author fills his pages with indelible imagery. For example, as Adamson clandestinely traverses Russia, he notes the environment: “The loneliness cannot be understated. It is a vast, beautiful, unending sea of silent hills, some of them green with stubborn grass and moss, but most of it just bald rock.”
A stirring spy tale with two unforgettable protagonists.Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-73256-411-4
Page Count: 550
Publisher: Nine Dusks Entertainment
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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