Promoting "face-offs" pitting one author against another makes no sense since the goal here is cohesion. That said, this...
Dennis Lehane's Patrick Kenzie, Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch, Ian Rankin's John Rebus and Lee Child's Jack Reacher are among the popular sleuths who mix it up in this story anthology from the International Thriller Writers trade group.
Editor Baldacci stages 11 collaborations between leading mystery writers. Some of the character pairings are logical: It's easy enough for Rebus to travel from Edinburgh to London to collaborate with Peter James' Roy Grace on an odd cold case—an ailing survivor of the 1960s gang wars between the Mods and Rockers wants to be tried for a murder he says he committed back then. But a humorous meeting between the eternally wandering Reacher and Joseph Finder's Boston investigator Nick Heller is sheer happenstance. They end up in a Beantown bar seated on opposite sides of a nervous Joe whose life has been threatened by Albanian mobsters. Being that many of these authors have rather similar styles, blending them is less of a challenge than one might think. Ultimately, the appeal of the stories depends on the liveliness of the writing. Among the winners is a pairing of Jeffery Deaver's forensic specialist Lincoln Rhyme (and partner Amelia Sachs) and John Sandford's profiler Lucas Davenport (and Lily Rothenburg) on a case involving a sadistic sex criminal. Another standout brings together lesser-known figures: Raymond Khoury's FBI man Sean Reilly and Linwood Barclay's building contractor Glen Garber (used only once before). The other duos are R.L. Stine (bringing a fictional wild card to the party with Slappy the Ventriloquist Dummy) and Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child; M.J. Rose and Lisa Gardner; Steve Martini and Linda Fairstein; Heather Graham and F. Paul Wilson; John Lescroart and T. Jefferson Parker; and Steve Berry and James Rollins.
Promoting "face-offs" pitting one author against another makes no sense since the goal here is cohesion. That said, this anthology handles its concept well.Pub Date: June 3, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-6206-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014
The king of the superultramegatechnothriller returns with a 2,000,000-copy first printing, though Clancy’s labyrinthine new behemoth of demonic perils arrived too late for a full review. John Clark, the ex-Navy SEAL and master of secret operational missions from several earlier Clancy novels, including 1993’s Without Remorse, is now Rainbow Six and mastering CIA strike teams out to fight terrorists around the world. At first, an incident at a Swiss bank, the kidnaping of an international trader in Germany, and a ghastly raid on an amusement park don’t seem related. But the charged clouds of good and evil build toward a typically foreshadowed and explosive Clancy finish. Namely, a supremely powerful biotech company is led by a bonkers (yet well-spoken) environmentalist with the vision for a Project even more luminously insane than any frothy megaloid plot hatched by James Bond’s archenemy SPECTRE: a murderous ecoproject that may get underway during the Olympic games in Sydney, Australia, and involve the destruction of almost all human life, merely to insure the survival and greater safety of Nature itself. No disappointments here, but an unusually sumptuous cut of steak can’t hide the familiarity of the menu.
Pub Date: Aug. 3, 1998
ISBN: 0-399-14390-4
Page Count: 740
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1998
Clark's usual mixture now updated, with surprising and welcome assurance, for a new generation of imperiled women.
The doyenne of damsels in distress enters the brave new world of #MeToo.
Returning from a trip to Hong Kong, investigative journalist Gina Kane is eager to see her boyfriend, banker Ted Wilson, and nearly as eager to hear from CRyan, the mysterious correspondent who’d emailed her about “a terrible experience with one of the higher-ups” at REL News. But Ted has just left on a business trip of his own, and despite Gina’s repeated attempts, CRyan doesn’t reply. By the time Gina has identified her as Catherine Ryan, she’s been killed in a jet ski accident in Aruba. Since Cathy was an old hand at jet skiing whose death seems suspiciously timed, Gina, with the blessing of Geoffrey Whitehurst, the incoming editor at Empire Review, takes off for Aruba, where she satisfies herself that this was no accident. A long flashback to two years earlier shows REL associate producer Lauren Pomerantz reporting to Michael Carter, a lawyer in the news organization’s HR department, that venerable anchor Brad Matthews has harassed her and that she’s gotten some convincing proof that will put paid to he-said, she-said. The next hundred pages mark a notable stretch for Clark (I’ve Got My Eyes on You, 2018, etc.), who clearly relishes the opportunity to show a bunch of high-priced lowlifes—Matthews, Carter, CEO Richard Sherman, and Frederick Carlyle Jr., son and heir apparent to REL’s founder—scrambling to cover up Matthews’ bad behavior without leaving any trace that they’re doing so. Back in the present, Gina leans on enough sources to link Cathy Ryan’s death to Matthews’ serial abuse, but at considerable cost. Her relationship with Ted, who’s helping handle REL’s move to turn itself into a public corporation, is seriously jeopardized by her sleuthing. She can barely spare the time it takes to fly to Buffalo to check out the bona fides of her recently widowed father’s much younger new girlfriend. And savvy readers will realize long before Gina does that one of the conspirators at REL whose wings she plans to clip has ideas about clipping hers first.
Clark's usual mixture now updated, with surprising and welcome assurance, for a new generation of imperiled women.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-7170-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
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