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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Tinny perhaps, but still a minutely rendered and impressively steady feminist vision of apocalypse.
The time is the not-so-distant future, when the US's spiraling social freedoms have finally called down a reaction, an Iranian-style repressive "monotheocracy" calling itself the Republic of Gilead—a Bible-thumping, racist, capital-punishing, and misogynistic rule that would do away with pleasure altogether were it not for one thing: that the Gileadan women, pure and true (as opposed to all the nonbelieving women, those who've ever been adulterous or married more than once), are found rarely fertile.
Thus are drafted a whole class of "handmaids," whose function is to bear the children of the elite, to be fecund or else (else being certain death, sent out to be toxic-waste removers on outlying islands). The narrative frame for Atwood's dystopian vision is the hopeless private testimony of one of these surrogate mothers, Offred ("of" plus the name of her male protector). Lying cradled by the body of the barren wife, being meanwhile serviced by the husband, Offred's "ceremony" must be successful—if she does not want to join the ranks of the other disappeared (which include her mother, her husband—dead—and small daughter, all taken away during the years of revolt). One Of her only human conduits is a gradually developing affair with her master's chauffeur—something that's balanced more than offset, though, by the master's hypocritically un-Puritan use of her as a kind of B-girl at private parties held by the ruling men in a spirit of nostalgia and lust. This latter relationship, edging into real need (the master's), is very effectively done; it highlights the handmaid's (read Everywoman's) eternal exploitation, profane or sacred ("We are two-legged wombs, that's all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices"). Atwood, to her credit, creates a chillingly specific, imaginable night-mare. The book is short on characterization—this is Atwood, never a warm writer, at her steeliest—and long on cynicism—it's got none of the human credibility of a work such as Walker Percy's Love In The Ruins. But the scariness is visceral, a world that's like a dangerous and even fatal grid, an electrified fence.
Tinny perhaps, but still a minutely rendered and impressively steady feminist vision of apocalypse.Pub Date: Feb. 17, 1985
ISBN: 038549081X
Page Count: -
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1985
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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