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
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
An enjoyable visit with an old character, but not one of Ware’s strongest.
Travel writer Lo Blacklock is back. Ten years after the events of The Woman in Cabin 10 (2016), she's attending the opening of a lavish Swiss hotel when, once again, a mystery intervenes.
A decade after she almost died on a luxury cruise and ended up exposing a murder plot, travel journalist Laura “Lo” Blacklock is trying to get back into the business post-Covid-19 and post–maternity leave. When she's invited to an exclusive hotel launch by the Leidmann Group on the shores of Switzerland’s gorgeous Lake Geneva, her supportive husband, Judah, insists that she should go, and her old boss, Rowan, says that if Lo can score an interview with the reclusive Marcus Leidmann, she’ll publish it in the Financial Times. Leaving Judah and the kids at home in New York, Lo is surprised by a last-minute upgrade to first class, which kicks off her trip in style. The hotel is appropriately awe-inspiring in both scenic location and effortless luxury, and Lo starts to put the memories of last trip’s trauma behind her, thinking that maybe she can just enjoy the experience this time. But then, at dinner, she's surprised to see at least three guests who were also on that original cruise, and when she finds a mysterious note in her room saying "Please come to suite 11 as soon as possible," she gets another shock. To quote William Faulkner, she realizes that “the past is never dead,” and soon Lo is careening across Europe on her way to England, only to find herself embroiled in another murder. The back half of the novel offers her the opportunity to continue her amateur sleuthing, and while she avoids much of the physical danger that plagued her on the cruise a decade ago, she is in very real legal trouble. This is the prolific Ware’s first sequel, and it's fun to spend time with Lo again, as she's both savvy and kindhearted. Unfortunately, the mystery is not as atmospheric and gripping as usual for Ware, though even a lesser Ruth Ware thriller is still worth reading.
An enjoyable visit with an old character, but not one of Ware’s strongest.Pub Date: July 8, 2025
ISBN: 9781668025628
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Scout Press/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
