Winslow’s most ambitious yet, though its irony and pathos work better in individual episodes than across the whole broad...
A sprawling, old-fashioned saga focuses 25 years of Mexico’s violent drug history through the interlocking loyalties, obsessions and vendettas of a DEA agent, a drug lord, a courtesan and a killer-for-hire.
Winslow (California Fire and Life, 1999, etc.) starts with Art Keller, a DEA adviser who wants so badly to take down Don Pedro Aviles, the Patron of Sinaloa, that he makes what turns out to be a bargain with three devils: rising drug power Miguel Angel Barrera and his nephews Adan and Raul. Sean Callan, meanwhile, grows up overnight in Hell’s Kitchen when his sudden resolve to save his friend O-Bop from mob intimidation turns them both into teenaged killers on the run. And California girl Nora Hayden, who’s always enjoyed her power over the older men hitting on her, decides to turn pro under the tutelage of a San Diego madam. President Nixon, showing that like Art Keller he’s consistently two steps behind the Barerra family, declares war on drugs, and the policy of throwing money at interdiction ushers in an era of related real-life disasters. Crack cocaine makes its debut. American forces back freedom fighters in Central America. An earthquake rocks Mexico City. The Catholic Church resumes normal relations with the Mexican government. Heroin makes a big comeback. Along the way, Nora misses true love with Callan and becomes Archbishop Juan Parada’s best friend and Adan’s mistress; mounting casualties in the War on Drugs cause Art to break with the Barreras and swear revenge against Adan; and countless deals between warring drug factions and governments are torpedoed by double-crosses. Few members of the large cast will survive the final curtain, and you’ll need a scorecard to keep track of the quick and the dead.
Winslow’s most ambitious yet, though its irony and pathos work better in individual episodes than across the whole broad historical canvas.Pub Date: May 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-375-40538-0
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2005
BOOK TO SCREEN
A formulaic thriller that ranks with Quirk's lesser efforts.
Former Secret Service man Nick Averose becomes a pawn in a deadly political conspiracy in the nation's capital when he is framed for the murder of a former CIA director.
Twenty-five years ago, a young woman was found dead at a summer gathering attended by future senator and current presidential hopeful Sam MacDonough. The wealthy power broker looking to plant him in the White House will do anything to keep secret what happened that night. A month before the killing of the CIA director, a one-time flame of Nick's who had been at that summer party came to him seeking protection and then disappeared with her secrets. Nick, who, as part of his two-person security business, stages mock home invasions for potential targets to identify potential security weaknesses, escapes the scene of the CIA director's killing but not the crosshairs of the killers. Nick holds them off with the help of his trusty female tech assistant and a one-time Marine buddy who is now a successful contractor in Washington. Quirk is good at describing fancy trappings. A rich man's suit boasts "Milanese stitches and a silk latch hidden behind the lapel." Another fat cat drinks Dujac premier cru, a French pinot noir. But the characters themselves are lacking in the details and dimensions that would make them interesting. And the plot, usually the strong point for the author of The Night Agent (2019), is predictable.
A formulaic thriller that ranks with Quirk's lesser efforts.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-287549-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Sadly, the answers are neither as interesting nor even as surprising as the setup. This may be the first time most of...
A pair of present-day murders bring the past alive for a New Jersey cop still mourning the twin brother he buried 15 years ago.
The last few weeks of high school often bring out the graduates’ appetites for unaccustomed risky behavior. But no one in suburban Westbridge has ever been able to explain what Leo Dumas and his girlfriend, cheerleader Diana Styles, were doing on the railroad tracks that made them get hit by a train or why Maura Wells, the girlfriend of Leo’s twin, Napoleon, “Nap,” chose that night to disappear. Now, in one of those sudden lightning flashes only Coben (Home, 2016, etc.) could have thought of, that night comes roaring back with the discovery of Maura’s fingerprints in a car driven by a murdered Pennsylvania cop. Sgt. Rex Canton was shot during what would have been a routine drunk-driving stop if Rex hadn’t been off duty and specifically targeting the man who shot him. Detective Nap Dumas, who still regularly talks to his dead twin, knows he can’t work an out-of-state homicide, even one that links Maura, his vanished girlfriend, once again to Rex, one of his high school classmates. In fact the connection is even deeper, for Leo, Diana, Maura, and Rex were all members of Westbrook High’s Conspiracy Club, a group evidently designed to nurture the naturally anti-establishment paranoia of adolescents through the ages. When one of the club’s two surviving members—Hank Stroud, a math genius who’s been wandering the streets of Westbridge for years—is also murdered, Nap resolves to question the other survivor, Beth Lashley, who’s now married, living in Ann Arbor, and practicing cardiology. He soon finds that Beth’s resolve is equal to his own: she’s separated from her husband, announced a professional sabbatical, and gone AWOL. What secret could the Conspiracy Club have discovered that would remain so dangerous for so long?
Sadly, the answers are neither as interesting nor even as surprising as the setup. This may be the first time most of perennially bestselling Coben’s readers will beat his hard-used hero to the solution.Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-525-95511-5
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
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