Labyrinthean as always, but only a handful of thriller-meisters can make spy-craft so readable.
While Kennedy and Khrushchev swap unblinking stares, Egleton’s entertaining spies double-deal with their usual elan (The Last Refuge, 2005, etc.).
Whether they’re KGB, CIA or, for that matter, well placed in Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service, these tireless, talented spies are not to be taken at face value, as anyone who has ever ventured into Egleton’s murky world of secrets and lies can tell you. True, George Deakin is a bit of a special case, in that SIS knows he’s a double agent, working both sides of the U.K./USSR divide. What comes to puzzle SIS, however, is the manner of his death. Is it the accidental drowning it’s been made to seem? Or cold-blooded murder, having to do somehow with those Russian ships speeding toward Cuba and a scary confrontation with the United States? For once, Charles Winter, SIS honcho—his brain as icy as his surname—appears to be stymied. If it’s murder is it a bogus murder? That is, a murder calculated to get SIS looking the wrong way, chasing up the wrong garden path? If so, does it signify that the Soviets have seen under Deakin’s cloak to the hugger-muggery concealed therein? Or, even more sinister, do the Soviets want SIS to think they care about Deakin, the double agent, when actually they care much more deeply about something unrelated? A conundrum. Meanwhile, across the pond, American intelligence is trying desperately to get a fix on whether Khrushchev really means business. Suddenly super spy Vasili Korznikov defects from the USSR to the U.S., and now the only thing Winter can be sure of is that for Kennedy, Khrushchev, the SIS, the CIA and others, it’s a whole new bowl of borscht.
Labyrinthean as always, but only a handful of thriller-meisters can make spy-craft so readable.Pub Date: May 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-7278-6591-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2008
Cancel all your plans and call in sick; once you start reading, you’ll be caught in your own escape room—the only key to...
Four people answer an ominous summons from human resources only to be deliberately trapped in an elevator in Goldin’s debut thriller.
In the highflying world of finance, Vincent, Sam, Jules, and Sylvie used to be superstars, but recently they’ve failed to close too many lucrative deals, and they know their jobs are hanging by a thread. Called to a Friday evening meeting at an office building under construction, they become trapped in the steel elevator, which has been rigged to emulate an escape room. If they solve the clues, perhaps they can find their way out. At first, they assume it’s just the worst team-building exercise ever—but the clues point them toward a much darker possibility. How much do they know about the deaths of two young associates? Will they be able to solve the mystery and escape—or is the whole system rigged against them? There’s a Spanish proverb used by Tana French in The Likeness: “ 'Take what you want and pay for it,’ says God.” The main characters in Goldin’s novel should probably have paid more attention to the second half of that saying. Powerful, attractive, and unbelievably wealthy, they truly believe that their security and success are worth protecting at any cost. Despite the unsavory characters—or perhaps even because of them—this novel is pure entertainment. Offering a modern take on the classic locked-room mystery, Goldin strings the reader along by alternating chapters set in the past and in the present and by peppering the present chapters with riddles and word games. This is a commentary on the cutthroat, hypocritical world of finance, where one must sacrifice everything to stay on top. It provides us with antagonists we love to hate as well as a sympathetic heroine who pays the ultimate price for survival: her own sense of goodness and fair play.
Cancel all your plans and call in sick; once you start reading, you’ll be caught in your own escape room—the only key to freedom is turning the last page!Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-21965-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
Ex–County Coroner Dr. Sara Linton does seem to be managing a break from her own Job-like sufferings, at least for this...
Still more proof, if any were needed, that the most monstrous demons in Grant County, Ga., are lurking in the master bedroom.
Faith Mitchell, of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, returns home late from a training seminar to find her house trashed, her baby daughter locked in the shed, a man lying dead on the laundry-room floor—Faith herself will kill two other intruders before they can escape, and a third corpse will turn up in the trunk of the family car—and her mother gone. Capt. Evelyn Mitchell was eased into retirement from the Atlanta PD years ago after her narcotics squad was implicated in a web of corruption. Two of her former colleagues are doing time; a third, former Det. Boyd Spivey, is on death row for murder. So it’s not all that surprising that gang-bangers would have broken into her house looking for a big score. But why are their surviving colleagues in Los Texicanos and the Yellow Rebels suddenly so determined to annihilate each other, and how does Evelyn’s abduction fit into the picture? “I think we must be caught in the middle of some kind of war,” Faith’s boss, GBI deputy director Amanda Wagner, tells Faith’s partner, endlessly troubled Will Trent. The mounting body count, however, pales beside the ferocious conflicts among regulars in this high-octane series (Broken, 2010, etc.). Faith’s brother Zeke, returning from an Air Force posting, instantly resumes his long feud with her. Will is alternately abused by Amanda Wagner and his spiteful wife Angie. And Faith’s climactic showdown with her mother’s abductor will reveal far more personal motives for the runaway mayhem than she ever could have imagined.
Ex–County Coroner Dr. Sara Linton does seem to be managing a break from her own Job-like sufferings, at least for this installment.Pub Date: June 21, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-345-52820-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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