Dark, violent, and engrossing but with a contrived ending.
The Cold War threatens to rise from the dead in this fast-paced Swedish spy thriller.
Grandparents Stellan and Agneta Broman have been married for almost 50 apparently idyllic years. Stellan is a widely beloved television personality. But one night, Agneta receives a brief phone call, shoots her 80-year-old husband in the back of the head, and disappears into the night. Police think at first that the retired celebrity’s murder might simply be a botched burglary, but police officer Sara Nowak believes that Stellan has been targeted. Then, on beginning to learn about his past, investigators think it may be the “beginning of a much bigger chain of events.” They fear that the killer or killers may have kidnapped Agneta. Poor Stellan. He’d been “Sweden's playful uncle….It was like someone murdering Santa Claus.” Readers learn long before the authorities do that Agneta is on a mission and has waited for decades to receive the signal to kill this man she pretended to love. It’s a complex plot wherein a “gang of senile old spies” regret the demise of the Cold War, particularly the fall of East Germany. Lurking in the shadows is the mysterious Abu Rasil, who wants to be remembered as the greatest terrorist ever. As it happens, Stellan had a couple of secret lives unknown to his adoring public. He had once been an informal collaborator for the Stasi, the East German security service. Perhaps Stellan was Geiger, the man who had ruined so many Swedish lives. And to put it delicately, Stellan had disturbing relationships with young girls. Decades ago, Sara's mother used to clean house for the Bromans, and Sara had been the occasional and socially unequal playmate of their daughters. As tension builds, people die in bursts of bombs and profanity. Has the Cold War never really ended? Sara's boss tries to take her off the case, but naturally that doesn't stop her. There is plenty of excitement right up to the end. All seems lost until, like a deus ex machina, the solution appears.
Dark, violent, and engrossing but with a contrived ending.Pub Date: May 10, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5387-5437-5
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The novel offers mystery aplenty, but at its core, there is a deep and compassionate humanity.
Two old friends, relationship forged in fire and trauma, find themselves at the center of a murder mystery.
Frida Nilsen and Gabriel Miller are staying at the Ara, a comfortable desert hotel in Escalante, Utah, trying to decide whether both of them are ready to participate in a documentary about some mysterious point in their shared past. Late at night, Frida is standing on their suite’s private patio, smoking, when she overhears a fight between wealthy tabloid tycoon William Brenner and his young, glamorous wife, Sabrina. The next day, Sabrina’s body is found, her head caved in. When Frida tells the cops about the couple’s argument, William is arrested, but hours later, he returns to the Ara and seems to have both Frida and Gabriel in his sights. It turns out he recognizes Gabriel from a scandal 10 years prior, when his wife, Annie, went missing and was then discovered dead. Gabriel was never charged in her death, but papers like William’s had a field day stalking him and posting articles and photos that suggested his guilt. But unbeknownst even to William Brenner, Frida and Gabriel share a bond that’s deeper and darker than Annie’s death. They were born into a cult run by a charismatic dirtbag named Émile. Though they aren’t related by blood, this shared childhood and teenage trauma made them as close as siblings, and when they escaped, they had only each other. While Frida remains the narrator, chapters alternate back and forth between the present day and the past, offering a slow reveal from their childhood to their escape from the cult and the difficult years of adjusting to the real world. Michallon does incredible work building both characters and tension; Frida’s self-awareness and vulnerability clash with her strength and even hardness, but that’s what trauma has wrought. As Michallon poignantly writes, “This is who we are.…We start over together. Again. And again.”
The novel offers mystery aplenty, but at its core, there is a deep and compassionate humanity.Pub Date: July 8, 2025
ISBN: 9780593802762
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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