Baldacci (Simple Genius, 2007, etc.) can do this stuff in his sleep now, but it’s still entertaining enough.
Baldacci’s recurring Camel Club uses its special talents to help a scam artist in distress.
Beautiful, brainy con woman Annabelle Conroy, who took megamobster Jerry Bagger for $40 million in Baldacci’s The Collectors (2006), is still in hot water. Bagger, quite understandably, wants his money back. He also wants to tear Annabelle apart, piece by piece, limb by limb. He will stop at nothing to work through that list of tasks. Annabelle, feeling the heat of Bagger’s wrath radiating from his Atlantic City casino, drops in on old acquaintance “Oliver Stone” in Washington. Annabelle’s not exactly asking for help from the ex-CIA hit man, but she’s open to suggestions. While Stone, who used to be John Carr when he was in the government’s employ, works out a plan that will utilize the oddly skilled circle of friends that comprise the Camel Club, mild-mannered suburban dad Harry Finn is working through his own task list. He’s carrying out the serial execution of the squad of CIA assassins who staged Harry’s father’s fake suicide years ago. He thinks he’s more than halfway done because one of the killers on the list is John Carr, who is supposedly buried in Arlington Cemetery. Finn’s day job is testing security measures, mostly for Homeland Security, a career that puts him in cargo holds with fake bombs and allows him to bypass all the anti-terror nonsense we regular mortals endure at the airport. Those singular professional skills give him an edge with his murderous task, a job in which he is egged on by his mysterious mum. The two plots merge when Stone figures out what Harry is up to and why. It all has to do with the evil scheming of the former head of the CIA and a Southern senator who believes he would make a dandy president.
Baldacci (Simple Genius, 2007, etc.) can do this stuff in his sleep now, but it’s still entertaining enough.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-446-57739-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2007
An addictive psychological thriller.
When a mysterious novel appears on her bedside table, a successful documentary filmmaker finds herself face to face with a secret that threatens to unravel life as she knows it.
Catherine Ravenscroft has built a dream life, or close to it: the devoted husband, the house in London, the award-winning career as a documentary filmmaker. And though she’s never quite bonded with her 25-year-old son the way she’d hoped, he’s doing fine—there are worse things than being an electronics salesman. But when she stumbles across a sinister novel called The Perfect Stranger—no one’s quite sure how it came into the house—Catherine sees herself in its pages, living out scenes from her past she’d hoped to forget. It’s a threat—but from whom? And why now, 20 years after the fact? Meanwhile, Stephen Brigstocke, a retired teacher, widowed and in pain, is desperate to exact revenge on Catherine and make her pay for what happened all those years ago. The story is told in alternating chapters, Catherine's in the third-person and Stephen's in the first, as the two orbit each other, predator and prey, and the novel moves between the past and the present to paint a portrait of two troubled families with trauma bubbling under the surface. As their lives become increasingly entangled, Stephen’s obsession grows, Catherine’s world crumbles, and it becomes clear that—in true thriller form—everything may not be as it seems. But how much destruction must be wrought before the truth comes out? And when it does, will there be anything left to salvage? While the long buildup to the big reveal begins to drag, Knight’s elegant plot and compelling (if not unexpected) characters keep the heart of the novel beating even when the pacing falters. Atmospheric and twisting and ripe for TV adaptation, this debut novel never strays far from convention, but that doesn’t make it any less of a page-turner.
An addictive psychological thriller.Pub Date: May 19, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236225-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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