A fun read, loony in spots.
Sheepdogs boost a jet in the service of America’s off-the-books armies.
What’s in a name? asked Shakespeare. Quite a bit, apparently. Take sheepdogs, for example. As a man named Cheese explains to his wife, there are three types of people in the world: sheep, who don’t believe in evil; wolves, who prey upon them, and sheepdogs, who “understand violence, except they use that understanding to protect others.” He’s a sheepdog: an Afghan and a skilled pilot who works for a shadowy organization known as the Office and hopes to settle with his pregnant wife in America. He partners with Skwerl, an ex-Marine whose name would be Squirrel except that “Marines can’t spell for shit.” Nicknames are all assigned to them, and their real names don’t much matter anyway. The capital S Sheepdog hires them to go to Uganda and repossess—or steal, depending on one’s viewpoint—a Challenger 600 luxury jet and fly it to Marseille in exchange for a $1 million commission. Strangely, the main characters don’t know Sheepdog’s identity. Plenty of action ensues, of course, but the story is more caper than thriller, and protecting innocent lambs hardly seems the main thrust here. Don’t expect lots of gore or high body counts, even though the Russia-Ukraine war lurks in the background. A grizzly bear, a dominatrix named Mistress S, and a set of plates commissioned by Marie Antoinette keep the tone relatively light. Those fancy plates might be worth more than the plane even after they’ve broken a few, but not everyone is motivated by money. All Cheese really wants is not to have to work at the Esso station anymore. All that Ali Safi wants is to find the man responsible for his brother’s death. There are vivid images: “Just Shane” comes out of a shower wearing just a towel and a ski mask; Mistress S has tattoos on her wrist that record—ahem—how far she’s gone with clients. Author Ackerman is a skilled storyteller, weaving an unlikely set of details and making them look like they belong together. Compare this to the deadly serious 2034, which he co-authored with Admiral James Stavridis in 2021.
A fun read, loony in spots.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2025
ISBN: 9780593803851
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
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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