A vibrant, intricate thriller with a resolute investigator seeking to expose secrets that involve murder and a fraught...
An Australian federal police officer discovers that some things “you can’t hide forever” when she becomes embroiled in a deadly mystery shrouded for 70 years.
Fans of conspiracy thrillers eagerly await the part when a shadowy figure warns the protagonist, who may know something but is unsure what: “This should be the end of it for you….Do yourself a favour, wait a few years and write a book complete with your own grassy knoll.” But the character never does, and Kate Austin is no exception. “Talented but underprepared,” the officer is installed as the head of a task force investigating the M.I. Boys, a small but “extremely violent, relentless” group whose ranks are growing with recruited “disaffected Middle Eastern youth.” The M.I. Boys are tied to the murders of two undercover agents in regard to a theft of munitions, but Austin begins to suspect that something other than terrorism is afoot as the body count escalates (one character compares her to Angela Lansbury’s Jessica Fletcher from Murder, She Wrote, in that, as with Austin, “murders seem to follow” Mrs. Fletcher around). But when a former lover becomes a victim, Austin vows, “Vengeance is my only closure.” Her probe unravels an elaborately tangled plot that dates back to the decades-old murder (ruled an accident at the time) of the Australian prime minister and, 30 years before that, to an Australian desert expedition led by the ill-fated Harold Lasseter. Lasseter claimed to have discovered a gold-bearing reef, adding what one character calls “a touch of Allan Quatermain” to the story. Austin’s intense inquiry leads to possibly sinister goings-on at a supersecret “communications facility.” In Austin, debut author Hahn has created a credible figure formidable enough to shoulder further adventures. He writes potent action scenes with a vivid sense of place. The tale remains immersive in its Australian patois (“You’re on your Pat Malone out here mate”) and landscapes (“The craft had completed a brief pass over the sheer red sandstone cliffs of Kings Canyon and its Wilderness Lodge. On the horizon, they could make out the outline of the monolith of Uluru and the domes of Kata Tjuta”). But context and Google can help keep readers from getting lost. This is an auspicious beginning of a planned trilogy.
A vibrant, intricate thriller with a resolute investigator seeking to expose secrets that involve murder and a fraught expedition.Pub Date: June 28, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5144-9617-6
Page Count: 584
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...
Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.
Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: He’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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