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
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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