This high-stakes drama grabs your attention and doesn’t let go.
Secrets, lies, and revenge permeate this taut international thriller.
The recently married Ariel Pryce wakes up one morning in a Lisbon hotel room, expecting her husband, John Wright, to be in bed beside her. He isn’t. She looks for a note, tries calling him, queries hotel staff, all to no avail. She calls Portuguese police and then the American Embassy, who wonder at first if Ms. Pryce isn’t some crazy lady wasting everyone’s time. But a lot happens muito rápido: Ariel receives a ransom demand for 3 million euros to be delivered within 48 hours for John’s safe release by unknown captors. The CIA knows that John is not who he claims to be and thinks that Ariel "must be more important than she’s letting on.” For one thing, she changed her name from Laurel Turner in her adulthood. A nosy American reporter starts poking around. Moving between past and present and among the viewpoints of Ariel and her several observers, Pavone uses short scenes to build fast-paced tension. Who is behind the kidnapping, and why? Ariel isn’t rich, and there’s only one way—blackmail—to come up with the dough. She and her extortee can inflict great harm on each other, and in fact one of them had a head start years earlier. So will she get the cash and rescue John? Then suspicious polícia stop Ariel from boarding a flight to the U.S., the CIA monitors her calls, at least one CIA observer ponders the value of having her whacked, and a relentless, coke-sniffing reporter is convinced he smells a blockbuster scoop. Surprise builds on surprise, and although the reader may sense where the complicated plot is headed, the twists keep coming. Two nights in Lisbon sound like a fun vacation as long as someone isn’t trying to uncover a horrible secret from your past.
This high-stakes drama grabs your attention and doesn’t let go.Pub Date: May 24, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-3746-0476-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
PERSPECTIVES
A fun read. Terrorists make great Clancy fodder.
Evildoers plan attacks from America to India, and Jack Ryan Jr. is a prime target.
In Washington state, a man and his family are murdered, and President Jack Ryan learns it is another Poseidon Spear incident. Three retired members of that counterterrorism group have been killed now, and the U.S. government suspects a mole in its midst. Meanwhile, the Umayyad Revolutionary Council believes it has a holy and wholly anti-American mission. Against this backdrop, Jack Ryan Jr., and his fiancée, Lisanne Robertson, visit Delhi, India, to attend the wedding of Srini Rai, the brilliant surgeon who attached Lisanne’s prosthetic left arm. Lisanne had lost her arm in Tom Clancy Shadow of the Dragon (2020). Jack and Lisanne are both operators working for the Campus, a covert group that executes secret presidential directives. A wedding is a happy occasion, and the engaged American couple intend the trip as a vacation. Jack and Lisanne will attend a sangeet, an elaborate pre-wedding party. But it isn’t long before they survive a suicide bomb attack. As with all Clancy novels, there’s plenty of action on a global scale. In simultaneous strikes, terrorists plan to contaminate America’s Western water supply with radioactive waste from Washington’s Hanford nuclear power plant, blow up a spectacular new bridge in Kashmir, and kill the evil Ryan—or Junior, at least. It will be At-Takwir, the end of days. There is an appealing mix of Indian culture, high-speed action, and the rich lode of details that characterizes the whole series. And in the background lingers the question on several characters’ minds: Have Jack and Lisanne set their own wedding date?
A fun read. Terrorists make great Clancy fodder.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9780593718032
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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