Unlike his retired master Sir Kenneth Aubrey (A Hooded Crow, 1991), bullheaded Patrick Hyde isn't allowed to go gentle into that good night: Aubrey's replacement, Peter Shelley, talks him into going to India to look into Hyde's old mate Philip Cass's story that he didn't kill his mistress, film star Sereena Sharmar, wife of the minister of tourism. From the beginning there's no mystery about who really murdered Sereena: it was the outraged husband, oily V.K. Sharmar, whose wealth came from harvesting heroin poppies. But when the aging prime minster dies and V.K.'s wily brother Prakesh insinuates V.K. into the job, both Delhi Station and Shelley, an old school chum of V.K.'s, reverse their engines and hang Cass out to dry. The fate of one Englishman is nothing, of course, compared to the reputation of a statesman who can bring about Indian peace and stability, not to mention an open door to European trade. Disgusted with London, Hyde goes it on his own. First, he struggles to follow Cass's frantically cryptic hints to the evidence of the Sharmars' corruption; then, hearing that Cass has escaped from prison, he follows his trail to Kashmir in hopes of catching him there before his police torturers can apply the coup de grÉce. Oh, and he sets his own girlfriend, Ros Woode, to get close to V.K.'s mistress, Sara Mallowby, landing her in as much solitary peril as himself. By the time of the rousing climax, Ros will be sitting terrified aboard a flight to Paris waiting for the two men across the aisle to assassinate her, while wounded Cass and dogged Hyde will be dodging airborne pursuers as they climb a mountain pass to Afghanistan. Hyde thinks his Indian adversaries are still playing the games of the 70's, but this whole story has an unabashedly period flavor, from its bold loner hero to its transparently compromised politicos. Enjoy, enjoy.
Pub Date: June 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-017955-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
Box handles this foolproof formula with complete assurance, keeping the pot at a full boil until the perfunctory,...
The creator of Wyoming Fish and Game Warden Joe Pickett (Breaking Point, 2013, etc.) works the area around Yellowstone National Park in this stand-alone about a long-haul trucker with sex and murder on his mind.
The Lizard King, as he calls himself, normally targets lot lizards—prostitutes who work the parking lots adjacent to the rest stops that dot interstate highways. But he’s more than happy to move up to a higher class of victim when he runs across the Sullivan sisters. Danielle, 18, and Gracie, 16, are supposed to be driving from their mother’s home in Denver to their father’s in Omaha, but Danielle has had the bright idea of heading instead to Bozeman, Mont., to visit her boyfriend, Justin Hoyt. Far from home, their whereabouts known to only a few people, the girls are the perfect victims even before they nearly collide with the Lizard King’s rig and Danielle flips him off. Hours later, very shortly after he’s caught up with them in the depths of Yellowstone and done his best to eradicate every trace of his abduction, Justin, worried that Danielle refused his last phone call, tells his father that something bad has happened. Cody Hoyt, an investigator for the Lewis and Clark County Sheriff’s Department, is already having a tough day: At the insistence of his crooked boss, Sheriff Tubman, his longtime student and new partner, Cassandra Dewell, has just caught him planting evidence in an unrelated murder, and he’s been suspended from his job. If he’s lost his badge, though, Cody’s got plenty of time on his hands to drive downstate and meet with State Trooper Rick Legerski, the ex-husband of his dispatcher’s sister, to talk about what to do next. And so the countdown begins.
Box handles this foolproof formula with complete assurance, keeping the pot at a full boil until the perfunctory, anticlimactic and unsatisfactory ending.Pub Date: July 30, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-312-58320-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
BOOK TO SCREEN
A Gone Girl–esque confection with villainy and melodrama galore.
A wealthy woman with a handsome husband is preyed on by a ruthless con artist.
One day at the gym, Amber Patterson drops the magazine she’s reading between her exercise bike and that of the woman who happens to be beside her, Daphne Parrish. As she bends to pick it up, Daphne notices that it’s the publication of a cystic fibrosis foundation. What a coincidence—Daphne’s sister died of cystic fibrosis, and, why, so did Amber’s! “Slowing her pace, Amber wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. It took a lot of acting skills to cry about a sister who never existed.” Step one complete. “All she needed from Daphne was everything.” Everything, in this case, consists of Daphne’s outlandishly wealthy and blisteringly hot husband, Jackson, and all the real estate that comes with him; Daphne can definitely keep her two whiny brats. Amber hates children. But once she finds out that Daphne’s failure to give Jackson a male heir is the main source of tension in the marriage, she sees exactly how to make this work. Amber’s constant, spiteful inner monologue as she plays up to Daphne is the best thing about this book. For example, as Daphne talks about the many miseries her sister Julie went through before her death, Amber is thinking, “At least Julie had grown up in a nice house with money and parents who cared about her. Okay, she was sick and then she died. So what? A lot of people were sick. A lot of people died.…How about Amber and what she’d gone through?” Meanwhile, poor, stupid Daphne is so caught up in the joy of finally having a friend, she seems to be handing Jackson to her on a platter. Constantine’s debut novel is the work of two sisters in collaboration, and these ladies definitely know the formula.
A Gone Girl–esque confection with villainy and melodrama galore.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-266757-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
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