Great character-driven crime fiction—readers new to the series won’t be entirely lost, and Pendergast patrons will be...
Preston and Child (White Fire, 2013, etc.) return with another adventure for modern crime fiction’s most esoteric detective, FBI agent Aloysius Pendergast.
Badged by the FBI but given free rein, wealthy as a wizard Wall Street trader, intelligent enough to make Mensa members feel inferior, master of exotic Chongg Ran meditation, Pendergast, “skin as pale as marble, eyes like silver conchas,” shoulders his custom 1911 Les Baer Thunder Ranch Special .45 and sets out to find the killer who deposited his estranged son, Alban, dead on his Manhattan mansion’s doorstep. Alban is autopsied, and an exotic turquoise is found in his stomach. At the American Museum of Natural History, Pendergast consults an expert gemologist—worth reading if buying turquoise—and heads for California’s Salton Sea in search of the Golden Spider Mine, all while giving only passing notice to a museum murder under investigation by his friend Lt. Vincent D’Agosta. So begins Pendergast’s deconstruction of a deadly conspiracy originating with patent medicine and ending with bizarre battles—triflic acid, poison darts and Sumatran buckthorn as weapons—at the museum and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. A Pendergast ancestor, Hezekiah, built the family’s fortune on an elixir that ultimately left users with ALS- or Huntingon’s Disease–like symptoms. Now the villain is spurred by epigenetic changes wrought on users’ descendants by “Hezekiah’s Compound Elixir and Glandular Restorative.” Pendergast visits exotic climes for clues, and the authors offer sparkling descriptions—the Salton Fontainebleau is a “fantastical cross between a Chinese temple and an Asbury Park amusement parlor.” Constance Greene and other familiar characters appear, and Pendergast learns a startling truth about Alban, whose warped psyche had once wrought havoc.
Great character-driven crime fiction—readers new to the series won’t be entirely lost, and Pendergast patrons will be thoroughly satisfied.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4555-2589-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
Like Jeffery Deaver, veteran Coben (Stay Close, 2012, etc.) is a magician who’s a lot more fun to watch when you don’t know...
Six years after the summer girlfriend he’s convinced is the love of his life throws him over to marry someone else, a shocking series of revelations draws a Massachusetts professor back to her.
“Promise me you’ll leave us alone,” Natalie Avery demanded of Jake Fisher after her wedding to surgeon Todd Sanderson. And for six years Jake’s done exactly that. But the news of Todd’s death rekindles his desire to see Natalie again. What could be the harm, now that she’s been widowed by the robbers who shot Todd to death? When he travels to their home in South Carolina, however, he walks into mystery and denial. Todd’s widow isn’t Natalie, but someone named Delia. Natalie’s sister Julie Pottham denies knowing anything about Jake. So do Cookie, the Kraftsboro Bookstore Café owner who served Jake and Natalie all those scones, and Rev. Kelly, who officiated at the wedding. In fact, there’s no record that Natalie and Todd were ever married at all. An anonymous email telling Jake, “You made a promise,” grieves Jake but doesn’t deter him from his search. Neither does a close encounter with a pair of killers who want to know where Natalie is and are certain Jake can tell them. Up till now, Jake’s nightmare is as infernally all-absorbing as Dr. David Beck’s in Tell No One (2001). But the discovery of a clue that begins to unravel the mystery also sends the tale spiraling past the bounds of plausibility, even for a thriller, until Jake’s quest for the truth entangles benevolent conspiracies, hired killers, multiple disappearances, the Mafia and all the people besides Natalie that Jake has held nearest and dearest.
Like Jeffery Deaver, veteran Coben (Stay Close, 2012, etc.) is a magician who’s a lot more fun to watch when you don’t know how he’s fooling you.Pub Date: March 19, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-525-95348-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2013
Astute, insightful, and descriptive storytelling; a strong step in a new direction for Singh.
Soon after a widowed pianist returns to her tiny hometown in coastal New Zealand, a woman disappears, echoing the events of a summer when she was a teenager and everything shifted for her and her friends.
After burying her husband, Anahera Rawiri leaves London to return to Golden Cove, which sits next to the South Pacific Ocean and inside a “primal and untamed landscape.” Anahera has been gone for years, married to a rich playwright, living in London, traveling the world as a classical pianist. She’s remained close to her best friend, Josie, but only vaguely kept in touch with other Golden Cove friends; the teenage dissensions that began along social and economic lines in their group of friends grew into adult schisms exacerbated by betrayals and rivalries. Almost as soon as Anahera settles into the remote cabin her mother left her, beautiful young Miriama, who works at Josie's cafe, disappears. When the village comes together to search for her, Anahera acts as a bridge for the local policeman, Will, who is still considered an outsider, and she soon realizes that her friends and the town may harbor dark secrets: “Everyone has hidden corners of their life, even the people we think we know inside and out.” As she and Will follow the clues and discover more about her friends, the townspeople, and each other, they connect in profound ways even as they begin to suspect the search for Miriama may be connected to the disappearance of three female hikers one summer when Ana was a teenager. Popular romance author Singh shifts to a new genre, New Zealand gothic, in which nearly every character—including the dense, ferocious landscape—has something to hide, and studying them is nearly as fascinating and compelling as solving the multifaceted mystery.
Astute, insightful, and descriptive storytelling; a strong step in a new direction for Singh.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-09913-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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