Readers initially intrigued by the story’s action are likely to come away with deeper thoughts on mechanisms of control.
McGrath (Does Environmental Law Work?, 2010) delivers a thriller about suppressed truths and a secret organization bent on protecting them.
At the outset of this story, set around 2005, the heavy-drinking Sean McKenna finds himself at a Jerusalem cafe. Now in his late 50s, Sean spent some time working for the U.S. government as a linguist and cryptographer during the Vietnam War. He later turned his experiences into a book with “impressive sales,” and his current plans revolve around writing a novel, establishing contacts with the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad to “do some mild investigation,” and eventually achieving “the good life on a private Caribbean Island.” His grand scheme is interrupted, however, when he falls for beautiful archaeologist Faith Foley. Fifteen years Sean’s junior, she’s involved in an excavation that may lead to some startling religious discoveries. When a digger on her crew suddenly fears for his life, terrified of the secret religious organization Opus Dei, Faith sends him to meet Sean. But before they can converse, the digger is gunned down. Faith and Sean flee for their lives, but they’re quickly intercepted by a Mossad agent. Everyone seems to have the same question: what could a simple laborer have known that would get him murdered in public? Sean and Faith subsequently flee Mossad, but the plot thickens to involve the truth behind some aspects of Christianity and people who prefer such information to remain hidden. The action features a Blackhawk helicopter, hooded men with AK-47s, and a plethora of violent scuffles that keep the adventure lively. The portions of the novel exposing murky religious orders cover material that’s been explored in popular fiction before (as in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, a book Sean admits that he hasn’t read, prompting Faith to briefly explain Opus Dei to him). However, the story here ventures into even deeper evils. The dialogue is often obvious, as when Sean demands that someone “Find a seat and buckle up!” That said, some of the same character’s musings provide insights; at one point, he reflects that religion was once the opiate of the masses, but now the powers that be use “patriotism, fiery rhetoric and the means to deliver it to the people who still think they control their government.”
Readers initially intrigued by the story’s action are likely to come away with deeper thoughts on mechanisms of control.Pub Date: June 30, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-62901-105-9
Page Count: 348
Publisher: Inkwater Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
© Copyright 2026 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.
