Zestful heroics. Should rise to the top like one of Cussler’s real-life lost ships.
Fourth in the new, co-authored, Kurt Austin series (Fire Ice, 2002, etc.), which has been received with restrained jubilance.
Once more Cussler/Kemprecos open with a historical anchor for their tale. West of the British Isles in 1515, a sprightly Basque caravel battles three Spanish war galleys and sinks two of them before the third takes off. In Germany in 1935, the huge hydrogen-filled zeppelin Nietzsche sets forth on a secret flight to reach the North Pole—though the world will hear if success is had. Entering the Arctic, however, the German captain spies a ship stranded on the ice, and he descends (fatally?) to lend aid. Then, in the present, by the Faroe Islands halfway between Denmark and Iceland, whale-huggers on the big, blindingly psychedelic Sea Sentinel make an SOS eco-intervention to save a pod of fifty whales about to be slaughtered by Faroe Islanders. But a chopper overhead somehow takes control of the ship and rams it into the Leif Eriksson, a Danish cruiser, sinking the cruiser with several men still aboard in an airtight space. Twelve hundred miles away, off the Berents Sea by the northern coast of Russia, Kurt Austin tests a new submersible as part of his massive search-and-survey NUMA ship, the William Beebe. The new submersible has the ability to attach to the hull of a sunken ship (or a submarine with its hatch locked shut) with a big sucker mouth that allows a laser to cut a hole and salvagers to enter the lost ship. How can Kurt, his colleague Joe Zavala, and their new submersible answer the rescue call 1200 miles away before the trapped Danes are dead? Well, by Russian transport planes. Once the rescue is effected, a bit of Danish romance blooms before Kurt finds himself facing the megaloid multinationals whose chopper sank the Leif Eriksson, not to mention a madman’s museum—and the horn of Roland!
Zestful heroics. Should rise to the top like one of Cussler’s real-life lost ships.Pub Date: July 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-399-15041-2
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2003
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.
Coulter’s treasured FBI agents take on two cases marked by danger and personal involvement.
Dillon Savitch and his wife, Lacey Sherlock, have special abilities that have served them well in law enforcement (Paradox, 2018, etc.). But that doesn't prevent Sherlock’s car from hitting a running man after having been struck by a speeding SUV that runs a red light. The runner, though clearly injured, continues on his way and disappears. Not so the SUV driver, a security engineer for the Bexholt Group, which has ties to government agencies. Sherlock’s own concussion causes memory loss so severe that she doesn’t recognize Savitch or remember their son, Sean. The whole incident seems more suspicious when a blood test from the splatter of the man Sherlock hit reveals that he’s Justice Cummings, an analyst for the CIA. The agency’s refusal to cooperate makes Savitch certain that Bexholt is involved in a deep-laid plot. Meanwhile, Special Agent Griffin Hammersmith is visiting friends who run a cafe in the touristy Virginia town of Gaffers Ridge. Hammersmith, who has psychic abilities, is taken aback when he hears in his mind a woman’s cry for help. Reporter Carson DeSilva, who came to the area to interview a Nobel Prize winner, also has psychic abilities, and she overhears the thoughts of Rafer Bodine, a young man who has apparently kidnapped and possibly murdered three teenage girls. Unluckily, she blurts out her thoughts, and she’s snatched and tied up in a cellar by Bodine. Bodine may be a killer, but he’s also the nephew of the sheriff and the son of the local bigwig. So the sheriff arrests Hammersmith and refuses to accept his FBI credentials. Bodine's mother has psychic powers strong enough to kill, but she meets her match in Hammersmith, DeSilva, Savitch, and Sherlock.
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.Pub Date: July 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9365-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that...
Twenty-four years after a traumatic disappearance tore a Georgia family apart, Slaughter’s scorching stand-alone picks them up and shreds them all over again.
The Carrolls have never been the same since 19-year-old Julia vanished. After years of fruitlessly pestering the police, her veterinarian father, Sam, killed himself; her librarian mother, Helen, still keeps the girl's bedroom untouched, just in case. Julia’s sisters have been equally scarred. Lydia Delgado has sold herself for drugs countless times, though she’s been clean for years now; Claire Scott has just been paroled after knee-capping her tennis partner for a thoughtless remark. The evening that Claire’s ankle bracelet comes off, her architect husband, Paul, is callously murdered before her eyes and, without a moment's letup, she stumbles on a mountainous cache of snuff porn. Paul’s business partner, Adam Quinn, demands information from Claire and threatens her with dire consequences if she doesn’t deliver. The Dunwoody police prove as ineffectual as ever. FBI agent Fred Nolan is more suavely menacing than helpful. So Lydia and Claire, who’ve grown so far apart that they’re virtual strangers, are unwillingly thrown back on each other for help. Once she’s plunged you into this maelstrom, Slaughter shreds your own nerves along with those of the sisters, not simply by a parade of gruesome revelations—though she supplies them in abundance—but by peeling back layer after layer from beloved family members Claire and Lydia thought they knew. The results are harrowing.
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that she makes most of her high-wire competition look pallid, formulaic, or just plain fake.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-242905-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
© Copyright 2025 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.
