No literary pretension here, just a lot of violent action with bad guys and good guys and a little bit of Hollywood lore.
A movie stuntman and his pals take on a gang of bad guys who’ve been making trouble since 500 BCE.
Horror specialist Masterton (Edgewise, 2007, etc.) foregoes the bag of supernatural tricks for a thriller that whips around from Gibraltar to Hollywood. The story starts when tough but amiable movie stuntman Noah Flynn overdoes a stunt, sending an expensive movie camera and some incredibly expensive footage to the bottom of the Mediterranean. After a jolly, boozy night with his fellow movie techies, Noah, assisted by ravishing Finnish co-stunt chum Silja, goes diving in search of the camera. The camera turns up quickly on the ocean floor, but so does some interesting World War II wreckage. Noah sends up some of the pilot’s effects with the camera. Among the items is a medallion bearing the pilot’s last name on one side and cuneiform markings on the other. The object is not unique. Its near twin shows up on the neck of a fellow seeking to assassinate lovely, randy, West African peace ambassador Adeola Davis thousands of miles away in the Middle East. Back in L.A., Noah asks a chum with academic connections to decipher the cuneiform. Bad idea. The intensely evil professor who tackles the translation is the latest top dog in a succession of evildoers going back to Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar. These are villains who believe that peace is the greatest obstacle to human advancement. With no time to mourn his ex-girlfriend, whose throat the bad guys slit, or his comedy-writing buddy Mo, whom they castrate as well as butcher, Noah, assisted by the intrepid and erotically athletic Silja, goes to war on the creeps, a quest that soon merges with the heavy duty of keeping Adeola alive.
No literary pretension here, just a lot of violent action with bad guys and good guys and a little bit of Hollywood lore.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-7278-6536-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2007
Yes, it’s formula. Yes, it’s not as gritty an exercise in swamp mayhem as Hiaasen, Buchanan, or Crews might turn in. But,...
“I started dreaming of getting rich, which, in Florida anyway, can lead to serious trouble”: another blockbuster in the making from Grisham (Rogue Lawyer, 2015, etc.), the ascended master of the legal procedural.
If justice is blind, it is also served, in theory, by incorruptible servants. Emphasize “in theory,” for as Grisham’s latest opens, judicial investigator Lacy Stoltz is confronted with the unpleasant possibility that a highly regarded judge may be on the take. The charge comes, discreetly, from a former lawyer–turned-jailbird-turned-lawyer again, who spins out a seemingly improbable tale of racketeering that weds the best elements of Gulf Coast society with the worst, from the brilliant legal minds of Tallahassee to some very unpleasant lads once styled as the Catfish Mafia, now reborn in an alt-version, the Coast Mafia. Lacy’s brief is to find out just how rotten the rotten judge is—and the answer is plenty. Naturally, this knowledge is not acquired without cost; the body count rises, bad things happen to good people, and for a time, at least, the villains get away with murder and more. Grisham has never been strong on characterization: Lacy, we learn, is content to be single, “to live alone, to sleep in the center of the bed, to clean up only after herself,” and so forth, but beyond that the reader doesn’t get much sense of what drives her to put herself in the way of flying bullets and sneering counsel: “His associate was Ian Archer, an unsmiling sort who refused to shake hands with anyone and reeked of surliness.” In laid-back Florida? Indeed, and in Grisham’s busy hands, a lot of players come and go, some fated to sleep with the manatees.
Yes, it’s formula. Yes, it’s not as gritty an exercise in swamp mayhem as Hiaasen, Buchanan, or Crews might turn in. But, like eating a junk burger, even though you probably shouldn’t, it’s plenty satisfying.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-385-54119-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
A Gone Girl–esque confection with villainy and melodrama galore.
A wealthy woman with a handsome husband is preyed on by a ruthless con artist.
One day at the gym, Amber Patterson drops the magazine she’s reading between her exercise bike and that of the woman who happens to be beside her, Daphne Parrish. As she bends to pick it up, Daphne notices that it’s the publication of a cystic fibrosis foundation. What a coincidence—Daphne’s sister died of cystic fibrosis, and, why, so did Amber’s! “Slowing her pace, Amber wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. It took a lot of acting skills to cry about a sister who never existed.” Step one complete. “All she needed from Daphne was everything.” Everything, in this case, consists of Daphne’s outlandishly wealthy and blisteringly hot husband, Jackson, and all the real estate that comes with him; Daphne can definitely keep her two whiny brats. Amber hates children. But once she finds out that Daphne’s failure to give Jackson a male heir is the main source of tension in the marriage, she sees exactly how to make this work. Amber’s constant, spiteful inner monologue as she plays up to Daphne is the best thing about this book. For example, as Daphne talks about the many miseries her sister Julie went through before her death, Amber is thinking, “At least Julie had grown up in a nice house with money and parents who cared about her. Okay, she was sick and then she died. So what? A lot of people were sick. A lot of people died.…How about Amber and what she’d gone through?” Meanwhile, poor, stupid Daphne is so caught up in the joy of finally having a friend, she seems to be handing Jackson to her on a platter. Constantine’s debut novel is the work of two sisters in collaboration, and these ladies definitely know the formula.
A Gone Girl–esque confection with villainy and melodrama galore.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-266757-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
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