A well-paced thriller with enough twists to maintain momentum and provide an enjoyable ride to the mostly satisfying...
After more than 40 years, the coverup of a diabolical Soviet experiment begins to unravel, and members of the Russian hierarchy will go to any lengths to prevent its disclosure in Pell’s (Much More Than a Game, 2015, etc.) espionage sequel.
In 1974, the twin sons of British geologist Christopher Southgate were abducted during a visit to Oman. They were never heard from again, and they were not the only set of twins to vanish. Fast-forward to the present, and Jessica Gleeson, also British, in Minsk, Belarus, is poring through Russian archives to complete a paper in her field of clinical psychology and discovers that someone has placed a folder labeled “Project Genome” on her desk. Later, when Jessica disappears, MI6 in London takes notice. Meanwhile, in Moscow, Anton Adamovich is a rising political star who’s favored by the Russian president to be his successor—but he also has enemies. Pell has the action play out across a broad landscape that includes the Crimea, Odessa, Belarus, Moscow, and London, with a large cast of tough guys that are good, bad, or somewhere in between. It’s left to MI6’s Andrew Ball to uncover the mystery that is Project Genome. Ball, Pell’s recurring hero, isn’t an action figure; the elegant, 60-something, semiretired agent has spent months recuperating from injuries received in Pell’s previous novel, set in Eastern Europe. But when his boss, Daniel Davis, calls upon Ball’s Russian-language expertise to translate some Genome documents, he’s back on the case. Although he’s not quite the central protagonist, he certainly holds the novel’s disparate pieces together. Pell is methodical in weaving a complicated plot that brings together an assortment of miscreants risen from the ashes of the fallen Soviet Union—political hacks, newly minted billionaires, former KGB agents, and, of course, the women who attach themselves to the powerful. Overall, the pages are filled with murder and mayhem, and lots of vodka, delivered in fluid, comfortable prose. Fans will be happy to learn that there’s a new Pell novel scheduled.
A well-paced thriller with enough twists to maintain momentum and provide an enjoyable ride to the mostly satisfying conclusion.Pub Date: April 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5246-2876-5
Page Count: 316
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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