A frantic but predictable foray into the war on terrorism.
In his debut novel, Fairfield blends breakneck action, romance, and mystical predestination.
The action in this novel was apparently “foretold” in the secret Dead Sea Scroll No. 973, discovered by a pair of Israeli and Egyptian archaeologists in 1955. The scroll predicted that the tribes of Jacob and Esau would be reunited and that peace would return to the Middle East by the joining of the Chosen—a man and woman, each with distinctive birthmarks, who would be married in Jerusalem. The Chosen’s Protectors are Ari and Sarah, who team up with their attack dog, Rock, in a commando team called Rock ONE. An evil Iranian man named Saeed, the agent of Satan, threatens the Chosen and their Protectors. The novel’s wild card is an Israeli man called Yoman, who’s been guided by visions from God as he develops a plan to protect the Chosen and defeat Saeed: “My role is to instruct and equip you, but even I cannot fire a single shot to protect the Chosen,” Yoman explains. The bulk of the novel details the training of the Chosen and Protectors, and Fairfield liberally weaves in budding romances and brutal violence. With the end result already preordained, readers will find few surprises. Saeed is cartoonishly evil; his first words are, “Don’t worry. I am not going to kill you until you see me perform my surgical skills on your dog.” Things are in black and white in this novel, from the faceless, brutal terrorists to the orphaned heroes, and the dialogue reflects that: “The first objective is protecting the Chosen and getting them to Jerusalem to be married….Our second priority is to kill those bastards and any other Muslim terrorist who dares to challenge Rock ONE.” Fairfield interviewed several veterans for the book, and his research is obvious, as he overlays the story with a great deal of technical detail regarding military hardware. As with most action movies, readers will enjoy the momentum of Fairfield’s thriller as long as they’re not seeking reasoned global perspective.
A frantic but predictable foray into the war on terrorism.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: 27th Street Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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