A flawed but enjoyable thriller that keeps the pages turning until the very end.
A detective’s previous case makes him—and his loved ones—targets of a psychopathic tribal cult leader in Askew’s thriller.
This sequel to 2023’s Alaska Deadly continues the adventures of Memphis-based private investigator Race Warren. Home in Tennessee after saving a man’s life in Alaska—the man, former police officer Ron Billings, is alive but in a coma in a Memphis hospital—Warren realizes the case is far from closed when assassins attempt to kill not only the hospitalized Billings but an anthropologist named Kate Hartley as well. Recognizing that the murder attempts are connected to a whalebone knife-wielding Inuit tribal shaman bent on revenge for a past alleged desecration, Warren heads back to Alaska to stop the elusive killer once and for all. Things get complicated when Warren’s love interest, flight nurse Renae Allen, is abducted by the bad guys. Thriller fans will find a lot to like here: The action is virtually nonstop from the first page to the last, with an abundance of car chases, shootouts, fight scenes, and—not surprisingly—numerous accompanying sequences set in various hospitals. The overall intensity is noteworthy as well; the level of looming physical danger is palpable throughout as Warren and friends are hunted by ruthless cultists and Russian thugs (“Warren ducked back behind the car as rounds struck overhead, raising a din of sounds, the clanging of metal and whining of ricochets, puncturing the raised trunk lid and pockmarking the top of the fender”). The author also keeps the emotional and psychological tension high by focusing on Warren’s connections with others and his guilt over being the reason their lives are in danger. There are minor issues with the story, however: The narrative relies too heavily on dialogue, which noticeably slows down the momentum in places, and the novel’s climactic conclusion is far too predictable and features an outdated trope that may leave readers rolling their eyes.
A flawed but enjoyable thriller that keeps the pages turning until the very end.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 23, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
High art meets low life in a tale a lot more sympathetic to the latter.
Someone is stalking the streets of Lt. Eve Dallas’s New York, intent on bringing new life to sex workers by snuffing out their old ones.
In 2061, prostitutes are called licensed companions, and that’s Leesa Culver’s job description when she’s accosted by a plausible-looking artist who wants to hire her as a model for the night. Before the night is over, she’s been drugged, strangled, costumed, and posed as an uncanny replica of Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring. The shock of the crime is deepened by the murder the following night of licensed companion Bobby Ren, whose body is discovered at an art gallery entrance costumed and posed as Gainsborough’s Blue Boy. The killer clearly has an obsessive agenda, a rapid-fire timetable, and access to unlimited financial resources that have allowed him to commission expensive custom-made outfits for the victims. This last detail both marks his power and points to the way Dallas, her gazillionaire husband, Roarke, and her sidekick, Det. Delia Peabody, will track him down by methodically narrowing the field of consumers who’ve purchased the costly costumes. After identifying the guilty party two-thirds of the way through the story, they’ll still face an uphill battle convicting a killer with no conscience, no respect for the law, and a budget that would easily cover the means to jump bail, remove his ankle tracker, and hire a private jet to escape to a foreign land with no extradition treaty. Robb keeps it all consistently absorbing by sweating every procedural detail along with her heroine. Only Dallas’ climactic interrogation of her prisoner is a letdown, because it’s perfectly obvious how she’s going to wangle a confession out of him.
High art meets low life in a tale a lot more sympathetic to the latter.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781250370822
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
The best news of all: The climax leaves the door open to further reports from the hilariously misnamed British Intelligence.
A series of mounting complications leads to yet another fight to the death between the discarded intelligence agents of Slough House and the morally bankrupt head of MI5.
As Jackson Lamb’s motley crew on Aldersgate Street struggles to cope with the deaths of River Cartwright’s grandfather and mentor, intelligence veteran David Cartwright, and their dim, beloved colleague Min Harper, new troubles are brewing. Diana Taverner, who runs the British Intelligence Service from Regent’s Park, is being blackmailed by former MP Peter Judd to do his bidding. Nothing untoward about that, of course, but this time, Judd’s demands, backed by a compromising tape recording, are more pressing than usual. So Diana reconvenes the Brains Trust—Al Hawke, Avril Potts, Daisy Wessex, and their ex-boss Charles Cornell Stamoran—whose last assignment was to serve as the contact for psychopathic IRA informant Dougie Malone while turning a blind eye to his multiple rapes and murders, which were really none of the Crown’s business. Taverner’s new assignment for the Brains Trust is the assassination of Judd. Since all these developments are filtered through the riotously cynical lens of Herron’s imagination, nothing goes as planned, and when the smoke clears, the fatalities don’t include Judd. Now that Judd knows he has as much reason to fear Taverner as she does to fear him, Lamb offers to broker a peace meeting between them which Slough House computer geek Roddy Ho will keep secret by knocking out 37 security cameras around Taverner’s dwelling. What could possibly go wrong?
The best news of all: The climax leaves the door open to further reports from the hilariously misnamed British Intelligence.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9781641297264
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Soho Crime
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
PROFILES
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