An author who seemingly can do no wrong, British spymaster Seymour delivers another first-rate effort—this one focused on an...
Twenty years after the IRA declared a cease-fire in Northern Ireland, a small, unreconstructed group of its members are plotting to buy weapons from a Russian arms dealer. A legendary runner of agents for MI5 known as Vagabond is called out of self-imposed retirement to thwart their efforts to stir up trouble.
For 16 years, Vagabond—given name Danny Curnow—has been leading tours of World War II sites in Normandy to get over the psychic hurt of manipulating too many intelligence officers to their deaths. But "Desperate," as he's also known, can't sit on the sidelines when British double agent Ralph Exton leads republican Malachy Riordan to Prague to do business with a one-time Russian intelligence agent now involved in organized crime. A host of characters adds to the intrigue, including Matthew Bentinick, the higher-up to whom Curnow is unflaggingly loyal, and ambitious MI5 agent Gaby Davies. Will Exton have the gumption to follow through on his assignment in the face of mortal danger? The action unfolds slowly with all its individual stories, interconnected points of view, and shifts between present and past. But in this, his 30th novel (and fourth concerning the Troubles), Seymour has his fragmented narrative down to such a science there's never any doubt that we will be rewarded for our patience. As classic a thriller as this is, it boasts a sharp contemporary edge that traffics as much in cynicism as despair (everyone is haunted by a death or moral failure). In either mode, the tension builds.
An author who seemingly can do no wrong, British spymaster Seymour delivers another first-rate effort—this one focused on an old-fashioned hero facing up to new challenges.Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-250-07565-9
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that...
Twenty-four years after a traumatic disappearance tore a Georgia family apart, Slaughter’s scorching stand-alone picks them up and shreds them all over again.
The Carrolls have never been the same since 19-year-old Julia vanished. After years of fruitlessly pestering the police, her veterinarian father, Sam, killed himself; her librarian mother, Helen, still keeps the girl's bedroom untouched, just in case. Julia’s sisters have been equally scarred. Lydia Delgado has sold herself for drugs countless times, though she’s been clean for years now; Claire Scott has just been paroled after knee-capping her tennis partner for a thoughtless remark. The evening that Claire’s ankle bracelet comes off, her architect husband, Paul, is callously murdered before her eyes and, without a moment's letup, she stumbles on a mountainous cache of snuff porn. Paul’s business partner, Adam Quinn, demands information from Claire and threatens her with dire consequences if she doesn’t deliver. The Dunwoody police prove as ineffectual as ever. FBI agent Fred Nolan is more suavely menacing than helpful. So Lydia and Claire, who’ve grown so far apart that they’re virtual strangers, are unwillingly thrown back on each other for help. Once she’s plunged you into this maelstrom, Slaughter shreds your own nerves along with those of the sisters, not simply by a parade of gruesome revelations—though she supplies them in abundance—but by peeling back layer after layer from beloved family members Claire and Lydia thought they knew. The results are harrowing.
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that she makes most of her high-wire competition look pallid, formulaic, or just plain fake.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-242905-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
Box handles this foolproof formula with complete assurance, keeping the pot at a full boil until the perfunctory,...
The creator of Wyoming Fish and Game Warden Joe Pickett (Breaking Point, 2013, etc.) works the area around Yellowstone National Park in this stand-alone about a long-haul trucker with sex and murder on his mind.
The Lizard King, as he calls himself, normally targets lot lizards—prostitutes who work the parking lots adjacent to the rest stops that dot interstate highways. But he’s more than happy to move up to a higher class of victim when he runs across the Sullivan sisters. Danielle, 18, and Gracie, 16, are supposed to be driving from their mother’s home in Denver to their father’s in Omaha, but Danielle has had the bright idea of heading instead to Bozeman, Mont., to visit her boyfriend, Justin Hoyt. Far from home, their whereabouts known to only a few people, the girls are the perfect victims even before they nearly collide with the Lizard King’s rig and Danielle flips him off. Hours later, very shortly after he’s caught up with them in the depths of Yellowstone and done his best to eradicate every trace of his abduction, Justin, worried that Danielle refused his last phone call, tells his father that something bad has happened. Cody Hoyt, an investigator for the Lewis and Clark County Sheriff’s Department, is already having a tough day: At the insistence of his crooked boss, Sheriff Tubman, his longtime student and new partner, Cassandra Dewell, has just caught him planting evidence in an unrelated murder, and he’s been suspended from his job. If he’s lost his badge, though, Cody’s got plenty of time on his hands to drive downstate and meet with State Trooper Rick Legerski, the ex-husband of his dispatcher’s sister, to talk about what to do next. And so the countdown begins.
Box handles this foolproof formula with complete assurance, keeping the pot at a full boil until the perfunctory, anticlimactic and unsatisfactory ending.Pub Date: July 30, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-312-58320-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
BOOK TO SCREEN
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