Another stellar book in the series, thanks to a taut mystery and the applause-worthy return of solid characters.
In the third entry in Safflind’s (Shadowmaster II: Dancing Through the Night, 2012) mystery-thriller series, a killer utilizing alien technology targets congressmen with ties to a government-funded space program.
When a congressman gets a letter opener to his eye, another member of Congress fears he may be next. Barry Sandler of Investigative Services, Inc. (ISI), a counterespionage group, investigates a NASA project that’s using radio waves to make extraterrestrial contact. There’s hope that advanced technology could be decrypted, but someone may have already intercepted a cosmic transmission—and would rather keep it a secret. However, the sci-fi here takes a backseat to what is essentially a murder mystery, and an admirable one at that. Suspects are legion, including a former Drug Enforcement Administration agent with a violent past. Barry, who acts as narrator, swipes from the initial crime scene a piece of blue cloth seemingly made of foreign material, and later, he’s pursued and shot at while in his Corvette. His limitations only heighten the suspense: His apparent attention-deficit issues help keep readers in the dark, particularly when his mind wanders during interviews, and as a “poorly controlled empath,” he continually senses malice but can’t pinpoint the source. Like the previous book in the series, this one has well-rounded characters who are full of personality, especially the other two ISI members, Dr. Adrian Kahler, a former psychologist who can extract information by putting people in a pseudo-hypnotic state, and a 7-foot-1-inch ex–Navy SEAL named Stanley Egor. There’s also NASA scientist Dr. Joanna Dembrowski, whose relationship with Stanley years ago—there’s still a spark—adds a poignant touch to a chilling storyline. Safflind packs his novel with action, made all the more exhilarating by a killer with an uncanny knack for breezing past the most rigid security. Elsewhere, good-natured humor keeps things light, as when lanky Stanley easily blends in at the Renaissance Festival, courtesy of troubadours on stilts.
Another stellar book in the series, thanks to a taut mystery and the applause-worthy return of solid characters.Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2012
ISBN: 978-1475200171
Page Count: 300
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Irritatingly trite woman-in-periler from lawyer-turned-novelist Baldacci. Moving away from the White House and the white-shoe Washington law firms of his previous bestsellers (Absolute Power, 1996; Total Control, 1997), Baldacci comes up with LuAnn Tyler, a spunky, impossibly beautiful, white-trash truck stop waitress with a no-good husband and a terminally cute infant daughter in tow. Some months after the birth of Lisa, LuAnn gets a phone call summoning her to a make-shift office in an unrented storefront of the local shopping mall. There, she gets a Faustian offer from a Mr. Jackson, a monomaniacal, cross-dressing manipulator who apparently knows the winning numbers in the national lottery before the numbers are drawn. It seems that LuAnn fits the media profile of what a lottery winner should be—poor, undereducated but proud—and if she's willing to buy the right ticket at the right time and transfer most of her winnings to Jackson, she'll be able to retire in luxury. Jackson fails to inform her, however, that if she refuses his offer, he'll have her killed. Before that can happen, as luck would have it, LuAnn barely escapes death when one of husband Duane's drug deals goes bad. She hops on a first-class Amtrak sleeper to Manhattan with a hired executioner in pursuit. But executioner Charlie, one of Jackson's paid handlers, can't help but hear wedding bells when he sees LuAnn cooing with her daughter. Alas, a winning $100- million lottery drawing complicates things. Jackson spirits LuAnn and Lisa away to Sweden, with Charlie in pursuit. Never fear. Not only will LuAnn escape a series of increasingly violent predicaments, but she'll also outwit Jackson, pay an enormous tax bill to the IRS, and have enough left over to honeymoon in Switzerland. Too preposterous to work as feminine wish-fulfillment, too formulaic to be suspenseful. (Book-of-the-Month Club main selection)
Pub Date: Dec. 2, 1997
ISBN: 0-446-52259-7
Page Count: 528
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1997
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