Rankin, who can outwrite most anybody in the business, drops one clue too many early on, but he’s so deft at maintaining a...
A stand-alone thriller from the British bestselling author.
Forsaking Edinburgh’s iconoclastic Inspector Rebus (Fleshmarket Alley, 2005, etc.), Rankin here offers up Gordon Reeve, ex-SAS soldier now operating a survival course for weekend warriors on Skivald, a small island off South Uist, Scotland. When he receives word that his brother Jim, a freelance journalist in California, has committed suicide, Gordon flies off to San Diego to claim his body. Despite the assurances of local cop Mike McCluskey that Jim did indeed kill himself, Gordon, relying on his SAS skills and instincts, decides that it was murder—a call that might explain why he’s soon being tailed, hassled and shot at when he follows up on Jim’s last assignment. Who or what was the Agrippa in Jim’s notes? The search for the answer will introduce Gordon to the chicanery of Jeffrey Allerdyce, of D.C.’s Alliance Investigation, and the global pesticide destruction sanctioned by Co-World Chemicals’ Mr. Kosigin, whose enforcer turns out to be Gordon’s Falklands campaign nemesis, the mercenary Jay. Crisscrossing the states and Europe, leaving a trail of bodies as he goes, Gordon winds up back on Skivald for a confrontation with ten men, then nine, then eight . . . until he exacts revenge on the one man who’s bedeviled him for years.
Rankin, who can outwrite most anybody in the business, drops one clue too many early on, but he’s so deft at maintaining a breakneck pace, so accomplished at conveying anger turned to fury and so gleeful in itemizing munitions that readers will zip right along as he swings from whodunit to international conspiracy plot to war-story retribution.Pub Date: March 7, 2006
ISBN: 0-316-00911-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2006
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that...
Twenty-four years after a traumatic disappearance tore a Georgia family apart, Slaughter’s scorching stand-alone picks them up and shreds them all over again.
The Carrolls have never been the same since 19-year-old Julia vanished. After years of fruitlessly pestering the police, her veterinarian father, Sam, killed himself; her librarian mother, Helen, still keeps the girl's bedroom untouched, just in case. Julia’s sisters have been equally scarred. Lydia Delgado has sold herself for drugs countless times, though she’s been clean for years now; Claire Scott has just been paroled after knee-capping her tennis partner for a thoughtless remark. The evening that Claire’s ankle bracelet comes off, her architect husband, Paul, is callously murdered before her eyes and, without a moment's letup, she stumbles on a mountainous cache of snuff porn. Paul’s business partner, Adam Quinn, demands information from Claire and threatens her with dire consequences if she doesn’t deliver. The Dunwoody police prove as ineffectual as ever. FBI agent Fred Nolan is more suavely menacing than helpful. So Lydia and Claire, who’ve grown so far apart that they’re virtual strangers, are unwillingly thrown back on each other for help. Once she’s plunged you into this maelstrom, Slaughter shreds your own nerves along with those of the sisters, not simply by a parade of gruesome revelations—though she supplies them in abundance—but by peeling back layer after layer from beloved family members Claire and Lydia thought they knew. The results are harrowing.
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that she makes most of her high-wire competition look pallid, formulaic, or just plain fake.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-242905-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
A methodical bomber gives Virgil Flowers a welcome chance to recover from his atypically bombastic last outing (Bad Blood, 2010, etc.).
Three days before his 70th birthday, billionaire Willard Pye and his board of directors are one room away from an explosion that rocks his boardroom outside Grand Rapids and kills Angela (Jelly) Brown, his executive assistant. Another blast follows with indecent haste, killing a construction superintendent at the site planned for a new PyeMart in Butternut Falls, Minn. The second bombing brings out the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in the person of Virgil Flowers, who assures the disgruntled Pye that he expects to clear the case within a week. “One week and I kiss his ass,” Pye tells Marie Chapman, his high-priced amanuensis. But a week doesn’t look like nearly long enough for a case this complex. Lots of townsfolk in Butternut Falls are against the new megastore. The Cold Stream Fishers, fearing that a pristine trout stream will be fouled, are especially militant. And Despite Pye’s denials, it looks as if a PyeMart expediter has bribed Mayor Geraldine Gore and at least three city councilmen into supporting the highly divisive project. Virgil networks, invites more than 100 locals to make up lists of potential bombers and wonders whether his faltering long-distance relationship with Warren Count Sheriff Lee Coakley is strong enough to keep him safe from Marie Chapman and other indigenous temptresses. The bomber, meanwhile, is moving ahead with a deep-laid plan, setting off one explosive device after another in order to make some kind of statement, mislead Virgil and cover his tracks. The tale drags at times, but the mystification and detection are authentic and the solution surprisingly clever. Virgil fully deserves to have Willard Pye kiss his ass.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-399-15769-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
© Copyright 2024 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.
bookshelf
