by Francis Hamit ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 6, 2011
Historical cloak-and-dagger with only a quiet spark.
Awards & Accolades
Our Verdict
GET IT
This exhaustively researched historical fiction examines Civil War–era spies and geopolitics.
Hamit’s (Shenandoah Spy, 2008) second novel focuses on the life and career of Mrs. Rose Greenhow, a rich 19th-century widow whose services as a spy may have gone beyond her years of work for the Confederacy—she may have also been in the pay of British and French intelligence. The story provides impressive period atmosphere and painstakingly researched details of Greenhow’s life in the 1850s and ’60s, as she exerts an invisible influence over the Mexican War and then builds a mostly female spy ring for the South. Some consideration is given to her marriage and personal life, though it’s generally overshadowed by the larger business to which she’s dedicated. Hamit steers clear of larger-than-life historical figures in his invention, making better use of famed detective/spy Allan Pinkerton and his agency. This is fitting, as the book maintains a sense of grave seriousness and devotion to truth, which the random appearances of colorful characters would diminish. Even the opening pages include a grim prison photograph of the real Mrs. Greenhow and her young daughter, cementing the truth-in-fiction tone. Along with the author’s first novel, the story of Rose Greenhow is meant to be part of a massive “super-novel” that will amount to a broad portrait of the era. The text’s conclusion accounts for the arrangement, but it’s also distracting. There’s a sense that this is only a chapter taken out of another story, as if some of the super-novel’s energy is held in reserve for other volumes. The skulduggery is scrupulously realistic, yet as a result, it can sometimes lack verve. Poetic license is exercised but always with the greatest economy.
Historical cloak-and-dagger with only a quiet spark.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2011
ISBN: 978-1595951717
Page Count: 309
Publisher: Brass Cannon Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Share your opinion of this book
by Caitlin Mullen ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 3, 2020
A lyrical, incisive, and haunting debut.
In Atlantic City, the bodies of several women wait to be discovered and a young psychic begins having visions of terrible violence.
They are known only as Janes 1 through 6, the women who have been strangled and left in the marsh behind the seedy Sunset Motel. They wait for someone to miss them, to find them. That someone might be Clara, a teenage dropout who works the Atlantic City strip as a psychic and occasionally has visions. She can tell there's something dangerous at work, but she has other problems. To pay the rent, she begins selling her company, and then her body, to older men. One day she meets Lily, another young woman who'd escaped the depressing decay of Atlantic City for New York only to be betrayed by a man. She’s come back to AC because there’s nowhere else to go, and she spends her time working a dead-end job and drinking herself into oblivion. Together, Clara and Lily may be able to figure out the truth—but they will each lose something along the way. Mullen’s style is subtle, flowing; she switches the narrative voice with each chapter, giving us Clara and Lily but also each of the victims. At the heart of the novel lies the bitter observation that “Women get humiliated every day, in small stupid ways and in huge, disastrous ones.” Mullen writes about all the moments that women compromise themselves in the face of male desire and male power and how they learn to use sex as commerce because “men are always promised this, no matter who they are.” The other major character in the novel is Atlantic City itself: fading; falling to ruin; promising an old sort of glamour that no longer exists; swindling sad, lonely people out of their money. This backdrop is unexpected and well rendered.
A lyrical, incisive, and haunting debut.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-2748-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Share your opinion of this book
More About This Book
by Riley Sager ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 21, 2022
A weird, wild ride.
Celebrity scandal and a haunted lake drive the narrative in this bestselling author’s latest serving of subtly ironic suspense.
Sager’s debut, Final Girls (2017), was fun and beautifully crafted. His most recent novels—Home Before Dark (2020) and Survive the Night (2021) —have been fun and a bit rickety. His new novel fits that mold. Narrator Casey Fletcher grew up watching her mother dazzle audiences, and then she became an actor herself. While she never achieves the “America’s sweetheart” status her mother enjoyed, Casey makes a career out of bit parts in movies and on TV and meatier parts onstage. Then the death of her husband sends her into an alcoholic spiral that ends with her getting fired from a Broadway play. When paparazzi document her substance abuse, her mother exiles her to the family retreat in Vermont. Casey has a dry, droll perspective that persists until circumstances overwhelm her, and if you’re getting a Carrie Fisher vibe from Casey Fletcher, that is almost certainly not an accident. Once in Vermont, she passes the time drinking bourbon and watching the former supermodel and the tech mogul who live across the lake through a pair of binoculars. Casey befriends Katherine Royce after rescuing her when she almost drowns and soon concludes that all is not well in Katherine and Tom’s marriage. Then Katherine disappears….It would be unfair to say too much about what happens next, but creepy coincidences start piling up, and eventually, Casey has to face the possibility that maybe some of the eerie legends about Lake Greene might have some truth to them. Sager certainly delivers a lot of twists, and he ventures into what is, for him, new territory. Are there some things that don’t quite add up at the end? Maybe, but asking that question does nothing but spoil a highly entertaining read.
A weird, wild ride.Pub Date: June 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-18319-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
Share your opinion of this book
More by Riley Sager
BOOK REVIEW
by Riley Sager
BOOK REVIEW
by Riley Sager
BOOK REVIEW
by Riley Sager
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.