A well-rearched but ultimately flat thriller.
In 1973, a Soviet test pilot defects to the United States, bringing the super-advanced MiG-25 Foxbat with him—along with deeply mysterious intentions.
While vacationing in Israel, Kazimieras Zemeckis, a onetime U.S. Navy test pilot and current NASA official, is shocked to witness what appears to be an Israeli plane shooting down the MiG. The intelligence-gathering Soviet plane is known to fly at such great heights and with such speed that getting close enough to threaten it isn’t thought possible. Though reported dead, the Soviet pilot, known as Grief, has actually landed the plane and immediately asks to defect. After alerting U.S. officials about what he'd seen, Kaz winds up accompanying Grief to the Air Force’s highly classified Area 51 testing and training site in Nevada, where the Soviet is debriefed as technicians take apart and study the MiG. Grief, with whom Kaz bonds as a fellow flyer, is eager to learn about the new American F-15 fighter, among other things. Hadfield, in a sequel to The Apollo Murders (2021), spends a lot of time with hardware, flight technology, nuclear rocket engines, and such, showing off his own experience as a top astronaut and test pilot. There are tense meetings in Moscow and Israel, a sizable dose of back history and a meeting of astronauts and cosmonauts in preparation for Apollo-Soyuz, the first crewed international space mission. Lots of interesting stuff, but the climactic showdown in the air between good guy and bad guy is rushed. And though the Yom Kippur War assumes great importance early in the novel with Golda Meir's appearance, it's quickly forgotten as soon as she’s off the page. Still, there's much to enjoy for fans of the series.
A well-rearched but ultimately flat thriller.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2023
ISBN: 9780316565028
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Mulholland Books/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Nail-biting and pressure-packed.
Jack Ryan Jr. and company race to stop a killer wave in this Tom Clancy thriller.
The ship Meridian Star departs eastern Russia unknowingly carrying a pair of containers with radioactive cesium chloride. The vessel is hijacked and scuttled in Micronesia near the Mariana Trench, and the crew is murdered. A huge insurance claim results, and Jack, an accomplished deep-sea diver who works for Hendley Associates, is there to investigate. The hostile Chinese learn it’s there and want that illicit cargo. Meanwhile, the Naval Undersea Warfare Center discovers a huge, mysterious object in 600 feet of water. At that depth, the pressure is unsurvivable without complex special equipment, which is vintage Tom Clancy. Whatever the strange object is, it’s “not a ship…not a submarine…not an aircraft.” On the side is a faded hammer and sickle and Cyrillic letters that spell Siren. Ryan teams up with Navy divers, and they look for a way to safely enter and explore the object. They discover that the underwater contraption has thermonuclear warheads attached, left and long forgotten by the USSR. If the warheads explode, they could still achieve their apparent purpose—to trigger a tsunami and destroy Guam, which is strategically important to the U.S. The Chinese know it too, and the race is on to take control. The result is plenty of high-stakes undersea action, where death can come from a bullet, a knife, or a sliced air hose. But there’s action on land, too. Navy master diver Carla Bennett and Jack take on a surprise assault in a hotel where Carla shows off stellar fighting skills—better than Jack’s. These two aren’t the only heroes here, as there’s a well-balanced cast of characters, all brave and likable. And of course—of course—where there’s a bomb, there’s a ticking clock.
Nail-biting and pressure-packed.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2026
ISBN: 9798217183166
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2026
The delightful debut of a classic, prolific detective.
It takes a quirky sleuth to solve a baffling closed-door murder.
The author himself or, more accurately, some version of him, walks the reader through a “gruesome murder” that occurred in a rural farming village. At the center of the crime is the wealthy Ichiyanagi family, including the widow Itoko and her five children. The “heinous crime” occurs in the evening after the festive wedding of eldest son Kenzo to schoolteacher Katsuko. Yokomizo, part narrator and part raconteur, liberally shares digressions such as the fact that his favorite British author is A.A. Milne, who wrote The Red House Mystery as well as the books about Winnie-the-Pooh. Written in 1946 but set in 1937 before the devastation of World War II, this is the first novel featuring Kosuke Kindaichi, the legendary detective who appeared in more than 70 stories by Yokomizo. If Yokomizo is the Japanese Agatha Christie, Kindaichi may seem the Japanese Hercule Poirot—although actually, given his unkempt hair and apparently distracted manner, he’s more a cross between Poirot and Columbo. Shrewdly, his entrance is delayed until midway through the novel, after the police have stalled and both the family and the reader are anxious for a solution. The narrator’s garrulous charm, in a mystery long on logistics and forensic clues but short on detailed character portraits or extended interactions, is a key to the novel’s success, leavening the more intricate pieces of the puzzle. Armchair detectives will welcome the helpful character list that precedes the story.
The delightful debut of a classic, prolific detective.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781805336549
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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