Despite the flaws, well worth reading—Fesperman’s empathy for his protagonists, struggling to do the right thing, is...
Middle East intrigue swirls around an aid worker forced into a clandestine post-retirement mission—more classy suspense from Fesperman (The Prisoner of Guantánamo, 2006, etc.).
Freeman Lockhart and his wife Mila have paid their dues. The two UN aid workers (he’s American, she’s Bosnian Serb) met during the siege of Sarajevo in 1992, then moved on to equally stressful assignments in Rwanda and Tanzania. Now they’re retiring to their new home on a Greek island, but their first night is interrupted by three spooks (Freeman assumes they’re CIA). They take Freeman to a nearby empty villa. They want him to go to Amman, Jordan, to check out a former colleague, Omar al-Baroody, a Palestinian. Omar has his own operation now, raising money for a hospital. But is it a front? Freeman’s role will be to follow the money trail. He agrees in an effort to protect his wife: In Tanzania, Mila inadvertently caused a bloodbath, and Freeman wants desperately to protect her from this knowledge, but unless he plays ball, the spooks will enlighten her. In Amman he finds a welcoming Omar (Freeman will be his director of programs) but bitter rivalries among his cohorts. Fesperman, who has traveled widely, provides details with an insider’s mastery: The gritty Bakaa refugee camp, a run-in with Jordan’s own spy outfit and hairy side trips to Athens and Jerusalem are all nailed to perfection. Unfortunately, there is a parallel, much less convincing, story line involving a Palestinian-American married couple in suburban Washington. Their daughter has died, a victim of post-9/11 Arab profiling, and the father, a top surgeon, is plotting a spectacular revenge. Omar and Freeman’s handlers recede into the background as the surgeon’s wife, Aliyah, arrives in Amman, pursuing her own agenda. To add to the confusion, bombs are detonated by an unidentified group at three Amman hotels, killing scores. The hokey climax has Freeman confronting the surgeon in Washington.
Despite the flaws, well worth reading—Fesperman’s empathy for his protagonists, struggling to do the right thing, is impressive.Pub Date: March 5, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4000-4467-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2008
Welcome to Margrave, Georgia—but don't get too attached to the townsfolk, who are either in on a giant conspiracy, or hurtling toward violent deaths, or both. There's not much of a welcome for Jack Reacher, a casualty of the Army's peace dividend, who's drifted into town idly looking for traces of a long-dead black jazzman. Not only do the local cops arrest him for murder, but the chief of police turns eyewitness to place him on the scene, even though Reacher was getting on a bus in Tampa at the time. Two surprises follow: The murdered man wasn't the only victim, and he was Reacher's brother Joe, whom he hadn't seen in seven years. So Reacher, who so far hasn't had anything personally against the crooks who set him up for a weekend in the state pen at Warburton, clicks into overdrive. Banking on the help of the only two people in Margrave he can trust—a Harvard-educated chief of detectives who hasn't been on the job long enough to be on the take, and a smart, scrappy officer who's taken him to her bed—he sets out methodically in his brother's footsteps, trying to figure out why his cellmate in Warburton, a panicky banker whose cell-phone number turned up in Joe's shoe, confessed to a murder he obviously didn't commit; trying to figure out why all the out-of- towners on Joe's list of recent contacts were as dead as he was; and trying to stop the local carnage, or at least direct it in more positive ways. Though the testosterone flows as freely as printer's ink, Reacher is an unobtrusively sharp detective in his quieter moments—not that there are many of them to judge by. Despite the crude, tough-naif narration, debut novelist Child serves up a big, rangy plot, menace as palpable as a ticking bomb, and enough battered corpses to make an undertaker grin.
Pub Date: March 17, 1997
ISBN: 0-399-14253-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1997
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Tense, believable, and action-packed, made more vibrant by Stevens’ sense of place.
It was a British Columbia summer, "so hot you couldn’t walk outside without feeling your skin cook," when 14-year-old Jess killed her father.
It was a fitting response to multiple abuses. This time, home from the Alberta oil fields and drunk, he attempted to drown Jess’ older sister Courtney in a toilet. Dani, oldest of the Campbell girls, took charge. The sisters buried the body in a hog pen and set off for Vancouver, running out of money in the worst possible place—Cash Creek. Gavin and Brian, two boys from a nearby ranch, offered work, but that was a ruse. Brian, while amoral, is the lesser villain, but Gavin, danger “rolled off him in waves, a dark and cold energy," is a fearsome psychopath. The sisters are held prisoner, tortured, and raped. There’s a fight. The girls escape. No police, because of the father’s death, but Allen, an ex-con bar owner with a pay-it-forward mindset, helps the sisters get to Vancouver. Jess narrates this story, with anger, confusion, and regret over the shooting spilling out. In Vancouver, a friend of Allen’s helps with new identities for the sisters—they're now called Dallas, Jamie, and Crystal. Then Jess/Jamie turns up pregnant, and there’s a moving portrayal of the elemental connection between mother and a child in womb. Seventeen years later, the novel’s second half unfolds from daughter Skylar’s, point of view, its violent climax triggered when Skylar’s curiosity sends the always-unstable Courtney/Crystal to seek revenge at Cash Creek. Thinking "I was the reason she decided to take off," Skylar follows. There, "betrayed, angry, scared, ashamed, and terrified," Skylar makes a surprising discovery.
Tense, believable, and action-packed, made more vibrant by Stevens’ sense of place.Pub Date: July 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-03458-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
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