by Dorothy Van Soest ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 1, 2020
A perceptive thriller set in an offbeat milieu.
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In the third entry in Van Soest’s series, the son of an atomic-testing veteran discovers that the side effects of radiation poisoning can last for generations.
In 1984, anti-nuclear protester Sylvia Jensen meets Norton Cramer, an ex-serviceman who was exposed to the Operation Redwing nuclear tests that were carried out in the Pacific in the 1950s. She soon realizes that she’s found a kindred spirit, both ideologically and romantically. They’re arrested while demonstrating against a plutonium storage company and weapons manufacturer, and in an ensuing court hearing, Norton makes a very public and very dangerous announcement to the world about nuclear testing. By becoming a whistleblower, he knows he’s risking the wrath of the government, but his past exposure to high levels of radiation has left him with little to lose. In 2019, at the memorial service of a fellow activist, Sylvia meets Corey Cramer, Norton’s son, whom she’d last seen when he was a toddler. Their chance meeting leaves Sylvia with a deep sense of responsibility for Corey’s well-being. When his own 4-year-old son dies of cancer, he angrily sets out on a mission to find out the truth about what happened in the Pacific all those years ago—and he becomes involved with a militant anti-nuclear protest group that plans a terrible act of violence. In this latest series installment featuring Sylvia Jensen, Van Soest presents a well-researched, compassionate, and exciting blend of social commentary and political thriller. Along the way, she also manages to offer some sharp insights into the struggles of the anti-nuclear movement and its opponents. The interwoven plotlines, which bounce back and forth between the past and present, give readers a compelling view of three distinct eras of nuclear struggle—from the initial nuclear testing, through its horrible effects, to the stories of those who must deal with the consequences many years on. In the end, Sylvia is forced to act quickly in order to honor Corey’s father as his son goes down a dark path.
A perceptive thriller set in an offbeat milieu.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-62720-291-6
Page Count: 286
Publisher: Apprentice House
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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by Elliot Ackerman & James Stavridis ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 12, 2024
A game effort at a tough theme.
The Singularity may become the new ultimate weapon in the aftermath of a nuclear debacle.
If the page-and-a-half prologue doesn’t stop the reader cold, nothing will. It begins: “If a beam of light / energy / open + / close— / reopen == / repeat / stop...” Stop, indeed. This will prompt only the geekiest among us to move on to Chapter 1. But do turn the page. In 2054, the U.S. is in turmoil. Two decades earlier, China nuked San Diego and Galveston while the U.S. inflicted the same on Shanghai and Shenzhen. In the aftermath, the two countries no longer dominate the world, and traditional U.S. political parties are no more. The current action begins when the physically fit President Ángel Castro collapses while giving a speech, prompting “malicious rumors that the president had suffered some sort of health crisis.” He had, and he dies. Of course, there are profound suspicions over his sudden demise. Was the president’s aorta inflamed by a sequence of computer code, à la the prologue? Is he a victim of “remote gene editing” by an unknown entity? Hence the inklings of the 21st century’s new existential threat, a race to achieve the Singularity, where—to oversimplify—technology and humanity become one. The cast includes some holdovers from the authors’ last book, 2034, including Dr. Sandy Chowdhury and Julia Hunt, a woman born in China with allegiance to the U.S. But key is the elusive (and nonfictional) Dr. Ray Kurzweil, thought to be living in Brazil. Meanwhile, American society threatens to explode into civil war between Dreamers and Truthers. But if the ultimate threat to humanity is the Singularity, it doesn’t come through convincingly on these pages. In 2034, the stakes were brutally clear, with millions of lives on the line. Two decades hence, they’re mushier—serious to be sure, but tougher to wrap up into a thriller. With apologies to T. S. Eliot: This is the way the book ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.
A game effort at a tough theme.Pub Date: March 12, 2024
ISBN: 9780593489864
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
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