A surprising and engrossing international terrorist thriller.
A CIA–fueled novel stars an unlikely hero.
Sherry Aspen is from Vermont. In the year 2000, her life seems set. She is about to graduate from Georgetown; she intends to go to medical school to become a pediatrician; and she will marry her wealthy boyfriend who will one day turn into a powerful politician. Sherry’s plans go awry when her boyfriend cheats on her. The relationship ends and she returns to Vermont. But her father is not pleased with her decision to come home, and Sherry is soon sent back to the Washington, D.C., area. She is broke and desperate but not without hope. After a brief stint as a law firm receptionist, she is recruited by the CIA and is soon undergoing rigorous training with other inductees. By the end of it, “the Company made her such that she could ground nails between her molars and swallow them.” It is just the beginning of this unassuming young woman’s remarkable odyssey. The deputy of intelligence at the CIA wants her to work in Black Ops in Afghanistan. As Sherry learned during her CIA training, terrorists in the Middle East are posing a national security threat. They are led by a man named Osama bin Laden, whose ethos comes from the teachings of Sayyid Qutb. Extremists like bin Laden are “willing to die for a borderless Islamic world.” It will take people like Sherry who are willing to die to stop them. She is sent to Afghanistan with a paramilitary team to journey across the country, “moving from village to village to collect intelligence on terrorist cells operating in these areas.” It is just one of many perilous missions to come.
It takes quite a few pages for the protagonist to really begin her adventures. Before Sherry is let loose in the espionage world, there is much for the audience to wade through. Readers learn about everything from details about the bigoted CIA director and Sherry’s experiences with skiing to a lengthy chapter about a bullied CIA analyst who kills himself. It is a long, verbose haul. Not all of the details prove tremendously relevant. Items such as the CIA director’s love of grape leaves and how, at a law firm party, “paralegals looked stunning, and the older men were both handsome and wealthy” do not add much substance. Yet there is still plenty of intriguing material to be found in Havel’s tale. Outb’s religious philosophy is explained to Sherry in an enlightening way. Some finer points of conflict, including how Pashtuns “wanted the Taliban to stop the corruption of Tajik and Uzbek leaders and to restore law and order in a country where mass killing was a daily way of life,” help explain Middle East relations in a digestible manner. What’s more, Sherry’s path is not what readers would expect from a typical thriller. She really is willing to do whatever it takes to fulfill her mission, no matter how degrading. She makes moves and travels to places that prove unexpected. Her final destination could hardly have been predicted at the outset. It may take nearly 400 pages to get her into this dangerous world, but once she’s there, geopolitical events could take her just about anywhere.
A surprising and engrossing international terrorist thriller.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2023
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 821
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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