A fresh Spanish setting, a stream of characters with great nicknames like “the Tractor,” and a mix of British, Eastern...
Overrun with spies, cops and Euro mobsters, Seymour's 29th novel concerns a female MI5 veteran's obsessive need to avenge the death of a young colleague who was kicked to death by a Russian crime lord.
Years after the brutal killing, word reaches Winnie Monks, former head of a since-dissolved organized crime group within MI5, that the mobster, known as the Major, is heading to Marbella on Spain's Costa del Sol. That intel is provided by "the Gecko," a young computer whiz working for the Major, in retaliation for getting beat up for a minor theft he didn't commit. Plans are made to set up surveillance in the vacant house next to the one in which the Major, a former KGB man, will be staying with a drug-smuggling associate. But when Monks and her team arrive at their appointed spot, they encounter housesitters: a moody and not easily handled young British couple, Jonno and Posie. This will prove to be more than a complication; it will alter the course of events. Working on a larger canvas than usual in terms of the sheer number of characters, Seymour keeps the book's motor humming, changing scenes and points of view with expert timing. The overall tone is lighter than in his pulse-pounders; some of the scenes could even pass for satire. And various elements here will recall bits and pieces from some of Seymour's better-known novels. But none of that diminishes his hold over the reader.
A fresh Spanish setting, a stream of characters with great nicknames like “the Tractor,” and a mix of British, Eastern European and American crime fighters make Seymour's 29th novel one of his most entertaining.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-05885-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
This killer debut is both a thriller with a vivid setting and an insightful study of race, class, and obsession.
The death of a teenage vacationer on a fictional Caribbean island reverberates through many lives, particularly those of her 7-year-old sister and one of the workers at the resort.
“Look. A girl is walking down the sand.…As she walks, heads turn—young men, openly; older men, more subtly; older women, longingly.…This is Alison.” A dangerous froth of sexual tension escalates around Alison Thomas, visiting Saint X from the wealthy New York suburbs with her parents and little sister, Claire. Schaitkin evokes her fictional resort with sureness—“the long drive lined with perfectly vertical palm trees,” “the beach where lounge chairs are arranged in a parabola,” the scents of “frangipani and coconut sunscreen and the mild saline of equatorial ocean.” After the disaster, the focus shifts to Claire, who changes her name to Emily after her bereaved family moves to California but never escapes the shadow of the event. “I knew the exact day I outlived Alison. Eighteen years, three months, twelve days.” When she moves back East for a publishing job in New York City, she crosses paths with one of the resort employees her sister was partying with the night she died. These men were exonerated in the matter of Alison's death, but Clive Richardson was arrested for selling pot in the process; after prison, his life is so devastated that he immigrates to Manhattan. After Emily gets in Clive’s taxicab, her obsessive desire to know more about her sister’s death—which, by now, the reader fully shares—consumes her life. The complex point of view, shifting among an omniscient narrator, Emily's perspective in first person, Clive’s immigrant story in close third, plus brief testimonies from myriad minor characters, works brilliantly. Just as impressive are Schaitkin’s unflinching examinations of the roles of race, privilege, and human nature in the long-unfolding tragedy. Setting the story in a fictional place, collaged and verbally photoshopped from real Caribbean settings, is daring, but this writer is fearless, and her gamble pays off.
This killer debut is both a thriller with a vivid setting and an insightful study of race, class, and obsession.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21959-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
Once again, Coben marries his two greatest strengths—masterfully paced plotting that leads to a climactic string of...
Coben (The Stranger, 2015, etc.) hits the bull’s eye again with this taut tale of a disgraced combat veteran whose homefront life is turned upside down by an image captured by her nanny cam.
Recent widows can’t be too careful, and the day she buries the husband who was shot by a pair of muggers in Central Park, Maya Burkett installs a concealed camera in her home to keep an eye on Lily, her 2-year-old daughter, and her nanny, Isabella Mendez , while she’s out at her job as a flight instructor. She’s shocked beyond belief when she checks the footage and sees images of her murdered husband returned from the grave to her den. Confronted with the video, Isabella claims she doesn’t see anything that looks like Joe Burkett, then blasts Maya with pepper spray and takes off with the memory card. Should Maya go to the police? They were no help when her sister, Claire, was killed in a home invasion while she was deployed in the Middle East, and she doesn’t trust Roger Kierce, the NYPD homicide detective heading the investigation of Joe’s murder. Besides, Maya’s already juggling a heavy load of baggage. Whistle-blower Corey Rudzinski ended her military career when he posted footage of her ordering a defensive airstrike that killed five civilians, and she’s just waiting for him to release the audio feed that would damage her reputation even more. So after Kierce drops a bombshell—the same gun was used to shoot both Joe and Claire—Maya launches her own investigation, little knowing that it will link both murders to the death more than 10 years ago of Joe’s brother Andrew and the secrets the wealthy and powerful Burkett family has been hiding ever since.
Once again, Coben marries his two greatest strengths—masterfully paced plotting that leads to a climactic string of fireworks and the ability to root all the revelations in deeply felt emotions—in a tale guaranteed to fool even the craftiest readers a lot more than once.Pub Date: March 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-525-95509-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
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