Henry is indelible, and Fulbright smartly surrounds him with equally memorable characters in this exceptional outing.
In Fulbright’s (Driving Mad, 2014) thriller, the real threat during the Cold War in the 1980s is the French president, who claims to have a weapon capable of shifting the balance of global power.
Henry Wright, an Englishman working in Brussels, is recruited by a secret U.S. intelligence agency. Henry is employed as an interpreter, a relatively painless job, but distrust within the states puts the man in peril. John Heldring, head of IBIS, a commodities-trading group that’s really a front for the Pentagon and State Department’s covert operations, for one, thinks Henry is a Pentagon spy and goes gunning for him. Superpowers America and the USSR, meanwhile, are understandably nervous when Henri Fouquet, France’s president, announces that French scientists have created bombs that can generate a devastating electromagnetic pulse. Mark Tollworth, a man from the Foundation for the Rescue and Restitution of Collected Objets d’Art, promises Henry a safe return to Brussels and a $250,000 paycheck if he simply delivers a message to Fouquet. The fascinating titular protagonist is the antithesis of a typical literary hero: he is seemingly unqualified for counterintelligence (agents erroneously suspect him of espionage), and he avoids the majority of gunfire, as Henry himself admits, by sheer luck. He’s also habitually contentious, mocking American slang and complaining about the tea at Starbucks. Fortunately, the story is rife with characters even more absorbing than Henry, especially Clem Haight, who essentially becomes one of Henry’s bodyguards, and former KGB assassin (and knife-throwing circus performer) Dmitri Zhukhovsky. The intelligent prose and sporadic (but welcome) action sequences are too often sidelined by incidental scenes; e.g., Henry and others have a trivial discussion of his name’s origin. But the characters’ delightfully ambiguous motives and backgrounds make distinguishing good or bad guys a near impossibility, giving the story an atmosphere of perennial unease. Not everyone is as good at steering clear of bullets as Henry, so the novel loses a few characters before it’s over. The author likewise leaves the ending wide open for a potential sequel.
Henry is indelible, and Fulbright smartly surrounds him with equally memorable characters in this exceptional outing.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-1784620202
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd.
Review Posted Online: April 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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