If Van Lustbader intends for Whitman and Red Rover to be serial players, he should avoid the fog of war and offer more...
Joining the trend of blending a soupçon of fantasy into the action-adventure genre, Van Lustbader (The Bourne Ascendency, 2014, etc.) adds a Louisiana Santeria priest as a role player in a conspiracy against the "blackest of black ops" units, the Red Rover team.
Red Rover is the go-to gang for King Cutler’s Universal Security Associates, a private defense contractor. Greg Whitman is the top gun, and he leads the three-man Red Rover fire-team into Pakistan to find Seiran el-Habib, the bad guy du jour. It’s a trap. One team member dies; Felix Orteño is wounded. Universal Security works mostly for the National Security Agency, which is ripe with internal conflict, most of which originates from Luther St. Vincent, chief of NSA’s Directorate N. St. Vincent also runs the off-the-books Mobius Project, an experimental effort to chemically create "weaponized warriors." With administrative assistants bed-hopping and Whitman relying on a nude pole dancer for friendship, it’s no surprise that both Whitman and St. Vincent are connected to an ageless bayou conjuror named Preach Desmortiers, whose familiar is a crow. These characters collide in a narrative with enough threads to knit a camouflage uniform, especially after Whitman rebuilds Red Rover by adding Charlie Daou, an expert armorer who’s also Whitman’s estranged longtime girlfriend. It doesn’t help that Orteño’s manipulated when St. Vincent rescues his drug-addicted sister. Yes, she too is connected to Preacher. Van Lustbader further complicates this smorgasbord of intrigue and conspiracies, hubris and action by bringing in Illuminati-like behind-the-scenes manipulators called the Alchemists and much Sturm und Drang about the Well, a peculiar place for rendition or disposal of superbad guys.
If Van Lustbader intends for Whitman and Red Rover to be serial players, he should avoid the fog of war and offer more focused narratives.Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7653-8551-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
Thin characters, fat plot-holes, sluggish pacing and Cussler’s signature clunky prose.
The smartest shamus on earth tracks the planet’s cleverest lowlife in the latest to roll from the Cussler assembly line (Polar Shift, 2005, etc.).
In 1906, they didn’t come any nastier than the Butcher Bandit, who, when the book opens, has already racked up 38 kills, a goodly number of them women and children. He robs banks, murdering—remorselessly—any unfortunate who happens to be on the premises at the time. So adept at the work is he, we’re told exhaustively, that he’s commonly believed to be uncatchable. Which is why Isaac (“He always gets his man”) Bell of the Van Dorn Detective Agency is assigned the case. But the Butcher Bandit is a slippery one indeed. Not only brilliant, audacious and cold-blooded beyond measure, he is also not the stuff of which bottom-feeders are usually made. For it turns out that the master criminal who has robbed banks all over the Southwest is actually a bank president himself. In San Francisco, the extremely solvent Cromwell Bank is a byword for respectability, its founder and chief executive a pillar of the community. That would be Jacob Cromwell, aka the much sought after Butcher Bandit. So how to explain Cromwell’s deep, dark plunge into criminality? He loves the challenge, he says. There’s also that new word, Bell explains to an understandably puzzled colleague, that psychology professionals are beginning to use: sociopath. At any rate, the game’s afoot, the antagonists perfectly matched, with Cromwell convinced he can rob, kill and elude capture, and Bell promising not to rest “until I capture the man responsible for these hideous crimes.”
Thin characters, fat plot-holes, sluggish pacing and Cussler’s signature clunky prose.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-399-15438-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2007
The secrets of the past refuse to keep quiet in this disquieting, taut thriller.
Thirty years ago, Seattle Police Capt. Edward Shank put down a serial killer dubbed the Butcher. Edward’s bullet ended Rufus Wedge’s sorry life. But did the killings end?
Hillier’s (Freak, 2012, etc.) third thriller fairly shudders with tension. Edward is ready to retire to an assisted living facility and give his grandson, Matt, the family home, a beloved Victorian in a posh neighborhood. An up-and-coming chef, Matt has parlayed his successful food-truck business into Adobo, the hottest restaurant in town, and the reality show networks are calling. The only trouble is that his girlfriend, Samantha, can’t understand why Matt hasn’t invited her to move in, too. After all, they’ve been together for three years. Pressuring Matt, though, isn’t getting her anywhere, and even their friend—well, really Sam’s friend—Jason is a little mystified. Certainly, Matt’s history of anger management trouble gives Jason pause. While Matt renovates the house and works late, Sam turns back to researching her latest true-crime book. This time, she has a personal investment. She’s convinced that her mother was killed by the notorious Butcher. Bored at the retirement home, Edward has become an invaluable sounding board. Like the Butcher’s other victims, Sam’s mother was raped, strangled and left in a shallow grave. Unfortunately for Sam’s theory, her mother was killed two years after Rufus Wedge’s death. Meanwhile, Matt’s contractor has unearthed a crate filled with gruesome artifacts. As Matt investigates the crate’s contents and Sam questions a mysterious informant, their romance unravels and the body count begins to rise. Hillier sends her reader into a labyrinth of creepy twists and grotesque turns. There’s no escape from the brutal truths exposed.
The secrets of the past refuse to keep quiet in this disquieting, taut thriller.Pub Date: July 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-3421-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014
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