Archaeological mystery and murder wandering in a desert of dialogue.
American spy hero Tristan Boumann uncovers the lost tomb of Cleopatra in this stand-alone murder mystery in Vinc3nt’s Pyramider spy-fi trilogy.
In 2010, after the assassination of an American archaeologist, Sen. Jack Ranstead calls on his friend Tristan Boumann to travel to Cairo to conduct an investigation. Wanting to avoid international tension and interference with Egypt’s tourist trade, Ranstead instructs Boumann to “look like you’re conducting an investigation, file a generic report, and get out of the way, so it can all blow over.” Boumann has other ideas when he arrives at the American Embassy and, after reviewing the compound’s security tapes, concludes the murder was an “inside job.” As Boumann pokes around for clues, he learns that the murder victim was working on an archaeological dig at an ancient temple known as Taposiris Magna while searching for the lost tomb of Cleopatra. The site also happens to be where Allied forces won a decisive battle at El Alamein in 1942 thanks to new Sherman tanks provided by the Americans. Boumann learns that during the war, the OSS (predecessor of the CIA) assigned Balthazar Flanders to the region to teach the Brits how to operate the tanks. When Boumann learns that Flanders’ dog tags were recently found at the dig site, he deduces that the OSS operative was pilfering Egyptian antiquities during the war and that his grandson Prescott may have other artifacts from Cleopatra’s tomb. From here, the plot goes astray as it tries to find ways to solve the murder and locate Cleopatra’s tomb. In an explosive ending that’s far from foreshadowed, the sarcophagus containing Cleopatra’s mummy shows up in an unexpected place. Bewildered readers won’t see it coming. While Vinc3nt’s solid prose reflects a considerable command of geography, history, and international affairs, it relies too heavily on dialogue. In the end, the plot twist is too crazy for a simmering story that never boils.
Archaeological mystery and murder wandering in a desert of dialogue.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2015
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Pyramider Laboratories
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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