Highly intelligent entertainment.
Renaissance barrister Matthew Shardlake joins Henry VIII’s mammoth progress to the rebellious North on a mission from the wily Cardinal Cranmer.
In the rainy autumn of 1541, in the city of York, clever, upwardly mobile, hunchback lawyer Shardlake and his trusty Jewish clerk Jack Barak slog through trackless forests with orders to protect an imprisoned rebel from his sadistic jailer. Cardinal Cranmer wants the prisoner brought back alive to London where he can be properly tortured for information about a recent conspiracy to unseat the once-glorious monarch, now obese and limping and on his fifth wife. The gloomy city is seething with resentment as Henry’s gigantic entourage approaches. Advance forces have taken over desecrated monasteries to house the thousands of soldiers, lawyers, courtiers, caterers and whores comprising the royal progress, and the Yorkers hate them all. Shardlake quickly stumbles onto the grisly murder of a glazier with ties to the rebellion and then himself becomes the victim of a string of attacks when he finds that the victim was guarding an old jewelry box containing documents that could blow the Tudor succession to bits. He’s knocked unconscious before he can read the papers, which quickly vanish, but someone thinks he knows enough to make him a danger. Shardlake has to elude the murderers, avoid his arch-enemy Sir Richard Rich and stay out of the way of the grumpy monarch, whose frisky, much younger wife, Catherine Howard, may be involved in a fatal flirtation. While Jack dallies with a pretty servant from Queen Catherine’s retinue, Shardlake gets assistance in his inquiries from a kindly old colleague who knows more about the conspiracy than he lets on. As always, former lawyer Sansom (Dark Fire, 2005, etc.) fleshes out the detection with rich historic details presented at a stately pace.
Highly intelligent entertainment.Pub Date: April 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-670-03831-8
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2007
Determined to shield her family from violence, a woman becomes a fierce freelance crime fighter in this mostly satisfying...
In the aftermath of a horrific crime, a woman makes herself over into a powerful protector—or perhaps an avenger.
Pinter (The Castle, 2019, etc.) already has the Henry Parker thriller series under his belt. In this book he introduces another potential series character, Rachel Marin. The story opens with a warm domestic scene of a young woman making dinner for her husband and two kids when a shattering (but undescribed) discovery intervenes. Jump ahead seven years, and single mom Rachel is living in another town several states away. When a mugger jumps her as she’s walking home from work, she leaves him bleeding in the street and hurries home to her bookish son, Eric, and sweet little daughter, Megan. Keeping them safe is her mission in life. But when she sees a news report about a body found on the ice beneath a nearby bridge, she’s riveted. The cops assigned to the case, detectives John Serrano and Leslie Tally, are shocked to discover the body is that of the town’s disgraced former mayor, Constance Wright. They’re even more shocked when Rachel, whom they don’t know, sends Serrano a message that the death was no suicide: “Constance Wright was murdered. And I can prove it.” When Serrano and Tally go to question Wright’s sketchy ex-husband, Rachel shows up at the same time, and they don’t know whether to order her away or be grateful for her help. Pinter builds a complex plot on the dual mysteries of Constance’s murder and Rachel’s transformation from suburban mom to crack investigator and lethal streetfighter. But the story has so many subplots and timelines that it can feel overstuffed, and some crucial questions asked early on are answered so late the reader might be surprised to be reminded of them. Pinter creates engaging characters, though, and keeps the suspense taut.
Determined to shield her family from violence, a woman becomes a fierce freelance crime fighter in this mostly satisfying thriller.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5420-0590-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This is secondhand tough-guy stuff, memorable only in that it feels like you've read it all before.
A former mob enforcer–turned–private eye is called in to investigate the savage murder of a Mafia leg-breaker in New York's Hudson Valley and finds himself on the trail of corporate espionage and a serial killer long believed dead.
The second book in Barron's series featuring Isaiah Coleridge (Blood Standard, 2018) seems, more than the debut, an obvious attempt to establish Coleridge as a strongman smartass in the Jack Reacher mold. The fight scenes are the written equivalent of action-movie choreography but without suspense, because the setup—Isaiah being constantly outnumbered—is so clearly a prelude for the no-sweat beat downs he doles out to the various thugs who get in his way. There's nary a memorable wisecrack in the entire book. What does stick in the mind are the sections that go out of their way to be writerly. It's not enough to say that it was a starry night in the Alaskan wilderness. Coleridge (the name is a clue to the series' literary aspirations) says, "I could've read a book by the cascading illumination of the stars." A later flash of insight is conveyed by "The scalpel of grim epiphany sliced into my consciousness." What with the narrative that spreads like spider cracks in glass and the far-too-frequent flashbacks to the man who was Coleridge's mentor, you might wish another scalpel had made its way through the manuscript.
This is secondhand tough-guy stuff, memorable only in that it feels like you've read it all before.Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7352-1289-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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