An engaging mystery, and a sizzling debut.
In Allan’s debut thriller, a priest aims to find the people responsible for his brother’s murder, whatever the cost.
An explosion at a political rally kills a popular presidential candidate, a Muslim reformist and a lawyer who had Senate aspirations. However, authorities are baffled as to which person was the intended target of the terror attack. The lawyer’s twin brother, Luke Miller, a Catholic priest raised in a Jewish household, becomes a media celebrity in the aftermath of the tragedy, and he spends much of his day dodging paparazzi. The press’s fascination is understandable; after all, Luke wears his brother’s clothes, drives his brother’s car and goes out in public with his brother’s widow. He decides to look into the bombing on his own, even though his investigation may ultimately put other people’s lives in jeopardy. Allan’s novel is a blistering tale with all the right ingredients for a mystery—for example, Luke’s prodding reveals more questions, such as why Luke’s brother had been carrying a gun. But the author’s multifaceted characters are what give the book distinction. Luke is a bracingly ambiguous character, prone to violent retorts and wracked with guilt over the fact that he and his brother had not been on the best of terms. The novel also addresses Luke’s ties to the cloth, as his need for retribution makes him question his faith. The story is full of complex relationships; for example, Luke is indisputably attracted to both his sister-in-law Deborah, and the Muslim reformist’s sister Jami. Luke encounters many dead ends and red herrings, but they always feel like steps closer to a solution rather than throwaway pieces of a puzzle. The book’s stellar ending addresses a lingering uncertainty and leaves much for readers to ponder.
An engaging mystery, and a sizzling debut.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1937110345
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Emerald Book Company
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The book isn’t compelling or believable as a thriller, but the author has potential in other directions.
Years after a young woman's sudden death in her best friend’s kitchen, a viral video reopens questions left unanswered.
Still struggling to emerge from the wake of the tragedy she witnessed the summer before she left for college, Maya Edwards has built a life for herself with a nice guy named Dan and has vowed to stop using Klonopin to manage anxiety and insomnia. Then “Girl Dies on Camera” appears on social media. In it, a young woman pitches over dead at a table in a diner in Maya’s hometown of Pittsfield, Massachusetts. As Maya sees to her horror, the woman was with Frank Bellamy, an older man/weirdo she dated that terrible senior summer. Frank was present when her best friend, Aubrey West, died the same way as the woman in the video, with no cause ever determined. Maya’s always thought Frank had something to do with it. Now she's sure and takes a trip home to see what she can find out. As a thriller, Reyes’ debut is weak. The suspense is minimal, with no sense that Frank is coming for Maya or that it actually matters whether these crimes are solved. In fact, the main threat to Maya’s well-being is the difficulty of Klonopin withdrawal and the heavy drinking she is doing to get through it, endangering her relationship with Dan, and the most interesting storyline concerns Maya’s mother and father. Brenda Edwards met Jairo Ek Basurto while on a missionary trip in Guatemala; he was murdered at the age of 22 before Brenda even knew she was pregnant. He left behind an uncompleted manuscript which Maya translated around the time she met Frank but then stuffed in a drawer; it turns out to have inspiration for her now. One of the most interesting conversations in the novel is between Maya and her mother, discussing the manuscript and the idea that our souls have a “true home” elsewhere. One would rather read a book about Brenda and Maya and skip Frank and his house in the pines altogether.
The book isn’t compelling or believable as a thriller, but the author has potential in other directions.Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-18671-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
One small step, no giant leaps.
Weir (The Martian, 2014) returns with another off-world tale, this time set on a lunar colony several decades in the future.
Jasmine “Jazz” Bashara is a 20-something deliveryperson, or “porter,” whose welder father brought her up on Artemis, a small multidomed city on Earth’s moon. She has dreams of becoming a member of the Extravehicular Activity Guild so she’ll be able to get better work, such as leading tours on the moon’s surface, and pay off a substantial personal debt. For now, though, she has a thriving side business procuring low-end black-market items to people in the colony. One of her best customers is Trond Landvik, a wealthy businessman who, one day, offers her a lucrative deal to sabotage some of Sanchez Aluminum’s automated lunar-mining equipment. Jazz agrees and comes up with a complicated scheme that involves an extended outing on the lunar surface. Things don’t go as planned, though, and afterward, she finds Landvik murdered. Soon, Jazz is in the middle of a conspiracy involving a Brazilian crime syndicate and revolutionary technology. Only by teaming up with friends and family, including electronics scientist Martin Svoboda, EVA expert Dale Shapiro, and her father, will she be able to finish the job she started. Readers expecting The Martian’s smart math-and-science problem-solving will only find a smattering here, as when Jazz figures out how to ignite an acetylene torch during a moonwalk. Strip away the sci-fi trappings, though, and this is a by-the-numbers caper novel with predictable beats and little suspense. The worldbuilding is mostly bland and unimaginative (Artemis apartments are cramped; everyone uses smartphonelike “Gizmos”), although intriguing elements—such as the fact that space travel is controlled by Kenya instead of the United States or Russia—do show up occasionally. In the acknowledgements, Weir thanks six women, including his publisher and U.K. editor, “for helping me tackle the challenge of writing a female narrator”—as if women were an alien species. Even so, Jazz is given such forced lines as “I giggled like a little girl. Hey, I’m a girl, so I’m allowed.”
One small step, no giant leaps.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-553-44812-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
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