A conspiracy-filled thriller that works by hinging on the family’s struggle for answers and by not providing the easy ones.
An American soldier’s death during a mission in Afghanistan seems to be part of a government conspiracy in Ireland’s debut military thriller inspired by the life of Pat Tillman.
Matt Crystal left behind his new wife, Melissa, and a promising NFL career so he could join the military, but his time is cut short when he’s killed by friendly fire from his own platoon. Fellow soldier John Ryan delivers a coded message to Matt’s high school football coach and mentor, Bob Heller, which Bob interprets as a call to investigate the death. After John goes AWOL, Bob starts to suspect that the military-industrial complex is orchestrating a coverup of a tragic accident or, even worse, Matt’s murder. The author deftly handles the story’s conspiracy angle; in addition to a cryptic message from Matt (relayed by John), Bob learns that Matt was vociferously opposed to the war in Iraq and that he befriended an Afghan Military Forces soldier who was also killed. Matt also kept notebooks—possibly with incriminating evidence—one of which mysteriously disappeared. Ireland smartly provides a perspective from Bob, as well as Matt’s family. With no clear-cut villain, readers might, like Coach Bob and the family, view organizations, namely the government and MIC, as villainous. For instance, Lt. Col. Coffee, who stonewalls the family’s questions with vague responses, is more a representative of government than an individual. There’s a great deal of back story to coincide with the main plot, including Bob’s divorce and Matt’s aspirations to play football as a high school freshman, but some of the stories feel like tangents: Matt’s uncle Ronnie, psychologically tormented by a corporal who heads PsyOps in Vietnam, has very little to do with the botched Afghanistan mission. And there are numerous character names and plot points to recall as Bob and others continue to look into Matt’s death. Ireland nevertheless excels at keeping the various plot elements in line, with helpful touches such as Matt’s mom, Jenny, explicitly listing “at least eight issues” that she wants clarified (like the drone that troops claimed to have heard soon after her son was killed). But Ireland does lose track of a few of the names: Matt is inaccurately called Pat several times, and his brother, Vince, is occasionally referred to as Kevin.
A conspiracy-filled thriller that works by hinging on the family’s struggle for answers and by not providing the easy ones.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2014
ISBN: 978-1493159901
Page Count: 244
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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