Fitfully delivers on its license to thrill but may not leave readers shaken and stirred.
An American intelligence agent gets a (Hono)lulu of a Hawaiian homecoming when he discovers a covert operation against an American ally in Voelker’s inaugural spy thriller.
“It is hard to imagine a national security threat here,” American secret agent Donovan Cross muses upon his return to his native Hawaii after 30 years away. He’s there to investigate the connection between suspicious electronic activities reported near Waikiki and the city’s Chinese underworld. There have been many reported sightings—albeit unverified—of high-ranking members of Chinese military intelligence in Honolulu. What would bring the Chinese military to this specific location, and what connection could there be to the island of Taiwan, over three thousand miles away? The clock is ticking for Cross to foil plans to launch a covert invasion wreaking untold devastation and destruction and endangering the lives of thousands. From Hawaii with love comes this somewhat tentative beginning of the continuing adventures of Mr. Cross. For armchair, poolside, or beach-bound devotees of espionage adventures, the lush tropical setting provides the optimum escape—throw in a hero who’s “the best American intelligence had to offer” (and a gorgeous Cross girl) and you have a passport to old school spy excitement. After a crackerjack opening involving a sabotaged parachute, a blood-frenzied school of hammerhead sharks, and a nick-of-time rescue—the stuff of a swell pre-credit movie sequence—the narrative bogs down a bit with Cross’ upbringing and tragic origin story (though it’s one that yields a climactic twist). Readers don’t need to hear wannabe agent Cross tell his friends, “Every adventure carries risk, but the world needs those willing to face it.” That’s a little too on the nose; just drop him in the middle of a plot to destabilize the globe and set him loose. And perhaps provide him with a worthy adversary like Blofeld.
Fitfully delivers on its license to thrill but may not leave readers shaken and stirred.Pub Date: April 28, 2025
ISBN: 9798218546021
Page Count: 274
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.
Character assassination reigns supreme, if not uncontested, in a Long Island suburb.
April Masterson loves her husband, corporate attorney Elliott; their 7-year-old, Bobby; and her YouTube channel, “April’s Sweet Secrets.” What she doesn’t love is whoever’s texting her warnings about how Bobby isn’t really in their backyard while she’s busy filming her videos or withering critiques of her baking show or veiled accusations about her past and threats about her present. Her best friend, former prosecutor Julie Bressler, may be bossy and opinionated, but surely she’d never turn on April this way. Who else might know enough to send April goodies like a picture of her kissing Mark Tanner, Bobby’s soccer coach? Though April struggles to get Elliot to take her ordeal seriously, even when she shows up at his office for a lunch date, he’s protected by his receptionist, Brianna Anderson, whose attachment to her boss goes far beyond loyalty. Then Julie turns on her; Maria Cooper, her friendly new next-door neighbor, turns on her; and in the most mind-boggling scene, Doris Kirkland, April’s mother, whose dementia has brought her to a nursing home, turns on her. McFadden releases an escalating series of toxins so deftly into the suburban atmosphere that it’s practically an anticlimax when someone gets killed and April instantly becomes the prime suspect. But that’s only a setup for the tale’s boldest move: switching its narrator from April to a fair-weather friend who frames the whole nightmare in dramatically different terms. As a special gift to her savviest fans, the author throws in an even more jolting epilogue that’s as hard to forget as it is to believe.
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249600
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
Everything you’d expect from Grisham, and this time something more.
After more than three decades of producing bestselling legal thrillers, Grisham tries his hand at a whodunit.
Eleanor Barnett wants Simon Latch to write her a will. That’s pretty much his job description, since practicing law in Braxton, Virginia, for 18 years hasn’t given him much opportunity to spread his wings. But the case of Netty, as she insists he call her, is different. She’s an 85-year-old widow whose second husband, Harry Korsak, left her with something like $20 million in cash and securities. She has a pair of stepsons, Clyde and Jerry Korsak, she’s determined to disinherit. And she already has a will, a document Wally Thackerman drafted a few weeks ago that basically allowed him, as Simon soon discovers, to pillage her estate. So instead of following his usual procedure and asking his longtime secretary, Matilda Clark, to type out the will, Simon types it himself and has it witnessed without saying anything to her. Of course he’d never do what Wally Thackerman did, but given his poverty, his gambling addiction, and his estrangement from his wife, Paula, whose income is a lot more stable than his own, he wouldn’t mind drawing just a bit on Netty’s wealth. As it happens, his new client turns out to be more trouble than she’s worth, maybe even more trouble than she would’ve been worth to Wally. And when she ends up dying, her death is swiftly identified as murder, with every indication that Simon killed her himself. The whodunit is unremarkable, but Grisham handles the legal complexities of the case with professional finesse and adds a wonderfully poignant portrait of a nothingburger lawyer trying his best to keep things more or less legal.
Everything you’d expect from Grisham, and this time something more.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9780385548984
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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