A more-than-worthy sequel with deft, complex and believable plotting, tense, gut-wrenching action, and classy literary...
Once again Ben Webster is reluctantly dragged into an apparent squabble amongst billionaires in Jones' (The Silent Oligarch, 2012) latest.
Webster works for the corporate investigation company, Ikertu Consulting. Darius Qazai, London-based refugee Iranian owner of Tabriz Asset Management, needs their services. A major business deal has gone bottoms up because of negative information turned up by the buyer. Qazai wants Ikertu to search his background and prove the information false. A simple phone call unearths the rat: rumors circulate that Qazai was responsible for the theft of the Sargon relief, a half-ton eighth-century Assyrian stone art object looted from Baghdad post-invasion. This is Jones’ second thriller involving Webster and Ikertu, and he takes time early on to offer an interesting character sketch of the CIA-for-billionaires founder, Ike Hammer. Jones is superb too in presenting off-beat personalities, one being the robotic and enigmatic assistant to Qazai, a French lawyer named Yves Senechal, “small, precise-looking...slight, so pale that the sun seemed to shine through him.” Another intriguingly left-of-center character is Webster’s go-to guy in Dubai, Fletcher Constance, an American banker gone native, “linen suits…extravagant neckwear…antique beard and the solid boom of [a] rhythmic voice.” Despite his connection to an art dealer murdered in Iran, Qazai, “vain, slippery, callously self-assured,” has a bigger problem, one that links his fortune to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Pursuing profits from funds invested post-revolution, the cruel and deadly Guards' VEVAK intelligence agent Zahak Rad unleashes mayhem and murder. Qazai’s family pays a price too steep, and then Rad threatens Webster’s wife and family. Webster escapes bruised and battered from a deadly confrontation with Rad in Marrakech, retreating to London and then Dubai where he snatches a Pyrrhic victory with a successful-enough extortion double cross. Ambivalent as ever about the ethics of the superrich and his part in solving their problems, Webster proves to be the ethically troubled anti-Bond.
A more-than-worthy sequel with deft, complex and believable plotting, tense, gut-wrenching action, and classy literary writing.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-59420-535-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
The worst fear raised by this odd creature feature is that it will spawn a sequel.
When he and his widowed mother are threatened by a freakish killer, a brilliant 11-year-old boy on the autism spectrum teams with an orphaned dog with human intelligence to fight off evil.
The boy, Woody, hasn't spoken a word in his life but has created a sophisticated virtual world to escape to and can hack the most complex dark web networks. He's determined to avenge his researcher father, who died in a suspicious helicopter crash. The dog, Kipp, orphaned by the death of his aged, loving caretaker, is part of an underground canine network boasting many other similarly advanced, genetically engineered dogs. (These dogs, who call themselves the Mysterium, are capable of such miracles as retrieving books from the library and reading them at night.) Out of the blue, a man who once worked with Woody's father and briefly dated Megan, Woody's mother, propositions and then threatens her. "I am becoming the king of beasts," he boasts, after having bitten a young woman to death. There is certainly no lack of raw action in the book, Koontz's first following five novels featuring investigator Jane Hawk. It just takes a certain kind of reader to...swallow the plot. Depending on one's susceptibility to heart-tugging boy-and-dog tales, the novel will either be dismissed as a work of cloying commercial calculation or enjoyed as a crafty blend of genres.
The worst fear raised by this odd creature feature is that it will spawn a sequel.Pub Date: April 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1542019507
Page Count: 380
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
As with all of Greaney’s work, this is a fun read. If only all our wars were fiction.
Russia launches war in Europe and Africa in this military thriller reminiscent of the late Tom Clancy.
A small group of Chinese communist special forces sneaks into Taiwan to assassinate a politician and provoke a war. This attracts intense U.S. attention—perfect timing for Russia to launch Operation Red Metal and “retain its proper place in the world.” The Russians' ultimate goal is to keep control of a rare-earth mine in Kenya, for which they need to wield “a scalpel through the heart of Europe” to destroy AFRICOM, the U.S. Africa Command headquartered in Germany. They kill Western satellites to take out GPS and make Europe deaf, mute, and blind. On Christmas Day, Russian trains disguised as civilian transport deliver offensive forces into Europe, unloading troops and tanks. They also attack in Kenya, where battles rage. NATO hasn’t detected this military buildup and is taken completely by surprise. A Russian general opines that the U.S. can’t fight a conventional force anymore, embroiled as it’s been in Afghanistan. Ha! Tell it to the Marines, like Lt. Col. Dan Connolly, who knows “this world’s a damn dangerous place” and figures out what the enemy is up to. The war lasts about a week, plenty of time for intense battle scenes and the distinct possibility of tactical nukes. Having produced well over 600 pages, Greaney and Rawlings, his Marine co-author, had a bout of logorrhea, but the collaboration has yielded plenty of realism. There are some good lines, as when an A-10 pilot strafes the ground while screaming “Die, Commie, die!” (He apparently didn’t get the memo about the USSR.) But the best line: “And as long as we get to pop a bunch of those Russkies, death ain’t but a thing.” Readers will be humming "The Marines’ Hymn” after finishing this paean to the U.S. Marines. Hoorah!
As with all of Greaney’s work, this is a fun read. If only all our wars were fiction.Pub Date: July 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-451-49041-4
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
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