by Gérard de Villiers ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 27, 2016
When you’ve published more than 200 spy novels, as de Villiers (1929-2013) did, some are bound to be unnervingly prescient....
A guileless would-be terrorist looking to buy a missile stirs up a hornet’s nest of Russian and American agents, each working his own dangerous angle.
Ever since a misdirected American drone wiped out most of his family, Parviz Amritzar, a naturalized American citizen born in Pakistan, has thirsted for revenge. Now his online research, whipped up by a local imam, has led him to a plan: he’ll get hold of an Igla-5 missile and shoot down Air Force One. Money is no object to Amritzar, whose wholesale carpet business has made him wealthy, but geopolitics is. The Igla-5 is manufactured in Russia, and the Russians aren’t eager to sell any of the missiles to a freelancer. But FBI assistant director Leslie Bryant, head of the Vanguard counterterrorist unit, is eager to pretend to partner with Amritzar long enough to get evidence against him that’ll lock him up forever; Bruce Hathaway, operations director of the Moscow FBI, is willing to ask Col. Sergei Tretyakov, of the FSB, to supply him with an Igla-5 to dangle in front of Amritzar; and spymaster Rem Tolkachev, briefed on this highly unusual transaction, sees no reason why he shouldn’t take advantage of it to set a trap for Hathaway so that he can be arrested and duly exchanged for Viktor Bout, an arms merchant imprisoned in the U.S. With so many players playing so many different games, there’s scarcely room for freelance CIA agent Malko Linge (Revenge of the Kremlin, 2015, etc.), but he manages to shake up the playing field, bed the best-looking women, kill the underlings most in need of killing, and save the world.
When you’ve published more than 200 spy novels, as de Villiers (1929-2013) did, some are bound to be unnervingly prescient. This one, which reads like a retro parody of James Bond (the high-tech weaponry! the double-crosses! the garter belts!), won’t cost you a single night’s sleep.Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8041-6939-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
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More by Gérard de Villiers
BOOK REVIEW
by Gérard de Villiers ; translated by William Rodarmor
BOOK REVIEW
by Gérard de Villiers ; translated by William Rodarmor
BOOK REVIEW
by Gérard de Villiers ; translated by William Rodarmor
by Michael Crichton ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 23, 2017
Falls short of Crichton’s many blockbusters, but fun reading nonetheless, especially for those interested in the early days...
In 1876, professor Edward Cope takes a group of students to the unforgiving American West to hunt for dinosaur fossils, and they make a tremendous discovery.
William Jason Tertullius Johnson, son of a shipbuilder and beneficiary of his father’s largess, isn’t doing very well at Yale when he makes a bet with his archrival (because every young man has one): accompany “the bone professor” Othniel Marsh to the West to dig for dinosaur fossils or pony up $1,000, but Marsh will only let Johnson join if he has a skill they can use. They need a photographer, so Johnson throws himself into the grueling task of learning photography, eventually becoming proficient. When Marsh and the team leave without him, he hitches a ride with another celebrated paleontologist, Marsh’s bitter rival, Edward Cope. Despite warnings about Indian activity, into the Judith badlands they go. It’s a harrowing trip: they weather everything from stampeding buffalo to back-breaking work, but it proves to be worth it after they discover the teeth of what looks to be a giant dinosaur, and it could be the discovery of the century if they can only get them back home safely. When the team gets separated while transporting the bones, Johnson finds himself in Deadwood and must find a way to get the bones home—and stay alive doing it. The manuscript for this novel was discovered in Crichton’s (Pirate Latitudes, 2009, etc.) archives by his wife, Sherri, and predates Jurassic Park (1990), but if readers are looking for the same experience, they may be disappointed: it’s strictly formulaic stuff. Famous folk like the Earp brothers make appearances, and Cope and Marsh, and the feud between them, were very real, although Johnson is the author’s own creation. Crichton takes a sympathetic view of American Indians and their plight, and his appreciation of the American West, and its harsh beauty, is obvious.
Falls short of Crichton’s many blockbusters, but fun reading nonetheless, especially for those interested in the early days of American paleontology.Pub Date: May 23, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-247335-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
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by Catherine Coulter ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 30, 2019
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.
Coulter’s treasured FBI agents take on two cases marked by danger and personal involvement.
Dillon Savitch and his wife, Lacey Sherlock, have special abilities that have served them well in law enforcement (Paradox, 2018, etc.). But that doesn't prevent Sherlock’s car from hitting a running man after having been struck by a speeding SUV that runs a red light. The runner, though clearly injured, continues on his way and disappears. Not so the SUV driver, a security engineer for the Bexholt Group, which has ties to government agencies. Sherlock’s own concussion causes memory loss so severe that she doesn’t recognize Savitch or remember their son, Sean. The whole incident seems more suspicious when a blood test from the splatter of the man Sherlock hit reveals that he’s Justice Cummings, an analyst for the CIA. The agency’s refusal to cooperate makes Savitch certain that Bexholt is involved in a deep-laid plot. Meanwhile, Special Agent Griffin Hammersmith is visiting friends who run a cafe in the touristy Virginia town of Gaffers Ridge. Hammersmith, who has psychic abilities, is taken aback when he hears in his mind a woman’s cry for help. Reporter Carson DeSilva, who came to the area to interview a Nobel Prize winner, also has psychic abilities, and she overhears the thoughts of Rafer Bodine, a young man who has apparently kidnapped and possibly murdered three teenage girls. Unluckily, she blurts out her thoughts, and she’s snatched and tied up in a cellar by Bodine. Bodine may be a killer, but he’s also the nephew of the sheriff and the son of the local bigwig. So the sheriff arrests Hammersmith and refuses to accept his FBI credentials. Bodine's mother has psychic powers strong enough to kill, but she meets her match in Hammersmith, DeSilva, Savitch, and Sherlock.
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.Pub Date: July 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9365-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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