Secrets catch up to Resistance heroes with startling effects in this fast-paced WWII mystery.
In Schulze’s historical thriller, a soldier-turned-Nazi-hunter fights for his life in occupied France.
The fog of war often yields no-win situations. However, the dangers facing William Gunnison seem more daunting than a battle-scarred soldier like himself might ordinarily expect. Stranded in German-occupied Paris, Gunnison is less intent on escaping with his life than he is on assassinating Adalwolf Bütz, a Nazi commandant whose bloodlust knows no bounds. However, the mission goes horribly wrong when Gunnison accidentally shoots and wounds Corey Baxter, an elderly American expatriate from a wealthy family, in the back. Gunnison’s unintended victim insists on being taken home to his abode in the French capital, and after he succumbs to his wounds, Jacques, Baxter’s faithful butler, reveals his employer’s dying wish—to inform his brother in New York City of his fate, and to get his servant to safety, away from the Nazis. Gunnison must contact Baxter’s mistrustful sibling using a coded prompt, “Olive branch,” whose origins prove troubling. As it turns out, Gunnison has secrets that have stark consequences for his fellow Resistance fighters, such as Nadine Sauvageot, whose identity is compromised due to her unlikely connection to him. Over the course of this novel, Schulze forces readers to confront the characters’ moral dilemmas: “He made mistakes….He was human.” It’s a brisk read, in addition to an exploration of its characters’ complex backstories. Overall, as World War II novels go, this one packs a roundhouse kick that present-day readers will feel sharply, as when Nadine tries to make her own way to New York, and a grim realization hits her: “We’re the unluckiest generation in the history of the world. We’re the ones born in Hell.”
Secrets catch up to Resistance heroes with startling effects in this fast-paced WWII mystery.Pub Date: Nov. 26, 2024
ISBN: 9781737037897
Page Count: 380
Publisher: David Schulze Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A feisty storm of Greek tragedy headlined by three very modern women.
On the isle of Capri, Helen Lingate seeks revenge on the people responsible for her mother’s death 30 years earlier—her own family.
When Sarah Lingate fell to her death on Capri in 1992, she left behind a 3-year-old daughter, Helen, and a legacy as a gifted playwright; her favorite necklace of golden snakes was lost to the sea. Thirty years later, Helen, chafing at the restrictions she’s grown up under as a member of the old-money Lingate family, hatches a plan with her uncle Marcus’ assistant, Lorna Moreno, to blackmail her uncle and her father with that same necklace, which mysteriously entered her possession a few months before. The novel begins on Capri just after Lorna disappears, and then traces her steps from 36 hours earlier. Interweaving chapters from the points of view of Helen, Lorna, and Sarah—as well as, later, a few others—we learn how Sarah gradually became stifled by the constant pressure of keeping up appearances until she became inspired to write a play, Saltwater, that was a not-so-thinly veiled tell-all revealing dark Lingate family secrets. It was shortly after this that she fell to her death. The loss of her mother has come to define Helen’s life, and if she can use the necklace as leverage to escape her family, and maybe learn the truth along the way, she’ll take the risk. Lorna’s motives are both murkier and more straightforward—she’s never had money, and she’s got a chip on her shoulder about it, so splitting 10 million euros with Helen sounds like a way to discard her past and start fresh. These strong, conniving women drive the drama and the narrative, and they are captivating enough that as twist after twist begins to unfurl, the novel still feels character-driven. The end—well, the end shocks. And it’s well earned. By the time the sun sets on the gorgeous excess and rugged coast of Capri, lives will have been destroyed.
A feisty storm of Greek tragedy headlined by three very modern women.Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593875551
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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
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