A rousing, detailed RAF thriller that delivers an effective climax.
A historical novel set in Britain before World War II focuses on a Royal Air Force officer.
Forsyth’s main character, RAF officer Allan Chadwick, returns to England after his adventures flying Vimy bombers in Iraq during the years preceding World War II. Chadwick is now assigned to the RAF aircraft research center at Farnborough, where he’s deeply involved in hammering out the workings of early warfare radar. He’s been tasked to create an investigative team to make formal reports on all aircraft accidents in Britain (he’s placidly warned that these probes can sometimes be “a little messy”). Unbeknown to him, he’s been identified by the Luftwaffe High Command as a possible target for subornation (“Young officer, not rich, may be open to bribery or possibly a little blackmail” goes the assessment). A covert Nazi mission code-named Amalgam sends lovely young Fraulein Inge Fischer to England in the guise of a German student visiting London. Chadwick’s own storyline is further tangled when he starts a relationship with Lady Melanie Fitzgibbon, who’s involved with a secretive political group dedicated to seeking appeasement with Germany. As these threads combine and plots mature on British soil, Chadwick finds himself at the center of high stakes and a climax full of breakneck action. Forsyth writes all this with a quick, dialogue-driven tempo that will keep readers turning the pages, with the narrative concentrating on both the nuts and bolts of bomber life in 1938 and the machinations of the Nazis in Europe and the pro-German forces in England. Forsyth’s portrayal of Chadwick is nicely textured—he’s a hero but a complex one—although not much of this multidimensionality extends to the rest of the book’s cast. Still, the snappy pacing and the sly undercurrent of humor (including a running gag about Chadwick’s behemoth old Bentley) keep the whole tale moving along briskly.
A rousing, detailed RAF thriller that delivers an effective climax.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 979-8-9853220-0-2
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Yacht Fiona Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.
Who was Shakespeare?
Move over, Earl of Oxford and Francis Bacon: There’s another contender for the true author of plays attributed to the bard of Stratford—Emilia Bassano, a clever, outspoken, educated woman who takes center stage in Picoult’s spirited novel. Of Italian heritage, from a family of court musicians, Emilia was a hidden Jew and the courtesan of a much older nobleman who vetted plays to be performed for Queen Elizabeth. She was well traveled—unlike Shakespeare, she visited Italy and Denmark, where, Picoult imagines, she may have met Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—and was familiar with court intrigue and English law. “Every gap in Shakespeare’s life or knowledge that has had to be explained away by scholars, she somehow fills,” Picoult writes. Encouraged by her lover, Emilia wrote plays and poetry, but 16th-century England was not ready for a female writer. Picoult interweaves Emilia’s story with that of her descendant Melina Green, an aspiring playwright, who encounters the same sexist barriers to making herself heard that Emilia faced. In alternating chapters, Picoult follows Melina’s frustrated efforts to get a play produced—a play about Emilia, who Melina is certain sold her work to Shakespeare. Melina’s play, By Any Other Name, “wasn’t meant to be a fiction; it was meant to be the resurrection of an erasure.” Picoult creates a richly detailed portrait of daily life in Elizabethan England, from sumptuous castles to seedy hovels. Melina’s story is less vivid: Where Emilia found support from the witty Christopher Marlowe, Melina has a fashion-loving gay roommate; where Emilia faces the ravages of repeated outbreaks of plague, for Melina, Covid-19 occurs largely offstage; where Emilia has a passionate affair with the adoring Earl of Southampton, Melina’s lover is an awkward New York Times theater critic. It’s Emilia’s story, and Picoult lovingly brings her to life.
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780593497210
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
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