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
Lame but, like its predecessors, bound for bestsellerdom.
A serial killer with a sense of history is the baddie in this latest from Baldacci, one of the reigning kings of potboilers (Split Second, 2003, etc.).
He kills, he leaves clues, he flatters through imitation: Son of Sam, the San Francisco Zodiac killer, Richard Ramirez, John Wayne Gracy, and so on down a sanguinary list of accredited members of the Monsters’ Hall of Fame. Suddenly, the landscape of poor little Wrightsburg, Virginia, is littered with corpses, and ex-Secret Service agents Sean King and Michelle Maxwell have their hands full. That’s because bewildered, beleaguered Chief of Police Todd Williams has turned to the newly minted private investigating firm of King and Maxwell for desperately needed (unofficial) help. Even these ratiocinative wizards, however, admit to puzzlement. “But I'm not getting this,” says Michelle. “Why commit murders in similar styles to past killers as a copycat would and then write letters making it clear you’re not them?” Excellent question, and it goes pretty much unanswered. Never mind—enter the battling Battles, a family with the requisite number of sins and secrets to qualify fully as hot southern Gothic and to prop up a plot in need. Bobby Battles, the patriarch, is bedridden, but Remmy, his wife, is one lively mischief-making steel magnolia. She’s brought breaking-and-entering charges against decent local handyman Junior Deaver, who as a result languishes in the county jail. Convinced of his innocence, Junior’s lawyer hires King & Maxwell to sniff around for exculpatory evidence. Well, will the two plot streams flow together? You betcha. Will the copycat-serial-killer at one point decide that King and Maxwell are just too clever to live? Inevitably. And when at last that CCSK’s identity is revealed and his crimes explained (talkily and tediously), will readers be satisfied? Only the charitable among them.
Lame but, like its predecessors, bound for bestsellerdom.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2004
ISBN: 0-446-53108-1
Page Count: 440
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2004
Strictly for fans prepared to worry that Woods’ highflying franchise hero may actually breathe his last this time.
Stone Barrington under siege.
Stone’s name is the 10th and last on the list that crosses his desk. But since it’s accompanied by an unsigned note that adds, “Dead, no special order, starting soon. Figure it out,” he wastes no time shoring up his defenses. And a good thing too, since his nemesis straightaway shoots three other victims and makes three clean getaways, along the way breaching the perimeter of Stone’s swanky East Side building and short-circuiting his security system. But Stone’s idea of going to ground isn’t quite the same as yours or mine. When Vanessa Baker, the baker he slept with in Treason (2020), phones him, he responds without ado to her overtures, and she’s soon ensconced in his place. He huddles with his old NYPD partner, police commissioner Dino Bacchetti, and CIA director Lance Cabot to identify his aspiring executioner. His efforts, first to shake off, then to track down the predator, lead him and his Gulfstream 500 to his estate in England, to his place in Cold Harbor, Maine, and eventually to Santa Fe. When he’s attacked by a hired killer during a shopping trip in Turnbull & Asser, he shoots the assailant, then seeks to apply pressure that will lead him to the paymaster. He even finds time to proposition Holly Barker, the secretary of state whose presidential campaign would be mortally wounded by news of any assignation with him. More people will die but not anyone you care about, and certainly not Stone, whom Dino describes, with pardonable understatement, as “the luckiest guy I know.”
Strictly for fans prepared to worry that Woods’ highflying franchise hero may actually breathe his last this time.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-08322-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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