A so-so plot with so-so characters makes for an uneventful read.
In a belated sequel to The Odessa File (1972), a re-emergent Nazi cult threatens to “finish what Hitler had started,” decades after it was thought to have been eliminated.
The person largely responsible for discovering and exposing the fascist ring was the star German journalist Peter Miller. All these years later, his 28-year-old grandson, Georg, a Hamburg reporter and podcaster, learns of the new Odessa (as the group is called) and their plans to upstage the country’s far-right political movement, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). The first clue to their existence comes at a hospital following a terrorist attack at a football stadium. A grizzled old man with dementia confuses Georg with his father, Horst Miller, and snarls, “I killed you. You and the Untermensch whore you married.” Horst, a federal cop and intelligence officer, and his wife had supposedly died in a car accident. Posing (badly) as a doctor from the hospital in pursuit of the truth, a shaken Georg visits the ailing man’s family, which results in him being targeted himself. No one believes Georg’s claims about the Odessa except his grandfather, who talks him into importing a psycho killer from England as protection (read: someone who kills bad guys two at a time). Meanwhile, in a poorly developed subplot, Vanessa Price grows increasingly uncomfortable working as a staffer for a right-wing junior senator from Ohio with hopes for higher office. She finds herself surrounded by political operatives responsible for the death of the far better man the senator replaced, who are plotting an illegal government takeover. Suffice it to say that the panic attacks from which Vanessa suffers don’t get any better as the story proceeds. A middling thriller that commits the cardinal sin of using a terrorist attack as a background event, the late Forsyth’s co-write with Kent pales badly in comparison to classics like The Day of the Jackal (1971).
A so-so plot with so-so characters makes for an uneventful read.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9798217044658
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
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
This mystery’s promising premise bogs down in an overloaded cast.
When one woman takes on another’s identity to uncover a crime, they both become suspects in a murder.
Aubrey Price and Camille Bayliss come from different worlds, only crossing paths because of the discovery that Camille’s husband, powerful lawyer Ben Bayliss, is hiding something terrible that affects them both. As the novel opens, Aubrey is driving Camille’s Range Rover, then teetering into a bar on Camille’s high heels, with Camille’s dress and credit cards and a wig that mimics Camille’s hair, pretending to be her because Ben tracks his wife’s every move and expenditure, and Camille wants to create a smokescreen while she sneaks into his office in search of evidence of that unnamed secret. But the scheme goes awry, and the women become each other’s alibis after Camille finds Ben murdered in their home. The first part of the book builds suspense and misdirection well, with Aubrey and Ben’s straight-arrow partner, Hank Landry, serving as first-person observers in some chapters while others track Camille. She’s a wealthy and privileged woman but not a happy one, stuck under the thumbs of her husband and her tyrannical father, Randall Everett, who pretty much runs their small Louisiana town. Aubrey was orphaned as a teen when her parents died in a car crash and has proudly fended for herself ever since, coming to depend on her four roommates, who have become friends. But as the cast of characters grows, it seems as if almost everyone in town has a motive for killing Ben, and the piling up of suspects and movements among different timelines can sometimes be confusing. And it all comes to a frustrating end when, after a whole school of red herrings, the solution to Ben’s murder arrives out of far left field.
This mystery’s promising premise bogs down in an overloaded cast.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9780593834459
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
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