Good for smiles and chuckles until war becomes more real.
The Blitz is on, and Britain must protect its precious symbol.
With his nation in peril in 1939, Winston Churchill concocts a scheme to protect the crown jewels: transport them to a submarine that will whisk them off to the safety of Canada. He recruits Hector, Lord Neville-Percy of Marlton, and police constable Caitrin Colline, a “Welsh firebrand, antiroyalist, and future destroyer of England’s aristocracy,” to act as a squabbling married couple driving a hay wagon. While this may not have been one of Winnie’s better ideas, he certainly finds two people with clashing backgrounds and personalities. (In reality, the jewels were buried on British soil.) The book is an oddity for a World War II novel. It’s funny and filled with witty dialogue, coming mostly from Caitrin. To each other, they are Hecky and Catty. When anyone asks what they’re carrying in the hay wagon, she answers the crown jewels, correctly expecting not to be believed. Some people they meet are not even convinced that they’re married. And they must deal with Die Brücke—The Bridge—whose members wish the English could just get along with Hitler. Violence is a long time coming in this novel, and for a while the humor carries more weight than the plot. But sometimes the interchanges cross into plain silliness: “‘…a horse box full of hay bales that no one is allowed to see. Tip-top secret, no?’ ‘Yes,’ Caitrin [replies.] ‘The hushest of all hushedy-hushes.’” The exchanges between Hector and Caitrin show off many of the class differences between them. Caitrin would just as soon expropriate all the aristocrats’ property and tell them to go get jobs like everybody else. Hector is defensive about his class, saying hey, don’t blame me for the circumstances I was born into. Eventually there is bloodletting—this is war—and Caitrin acquits herself as a woman you wouldn’t care to mess with. Meanwhile, they remain well aware of the scourge of the Nazi bombers pummeling England. So the big question is whether they will make it to the submarine or end up somewhere they’d never imagine.
Good for smiles and chuckles until war becomes more real.Pub Date: July 23, 2024
ISBN: 9781496749093
Page Count: 304
Publisher: John Scognamiglio Books/Kensington
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
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
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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