An often engaging tale of a woman who’s just as comfortable with melodrama as she is with harrowing espionage.
An attorney moonlighting as a covert agent helps a U.S. black-ops group target a powerful but diabolical organization bent on world domination in Mahler’s (Smoking Kills, 2010) thriller.
As far as Betty Thursten’s family knows, she’s an immigration lawyer in Washington, D.C. But her travels to out-of-state education conferences are typically covers for Betty to carry out assignments for clandestine agency Control. She was recruited by Tom Howell, her ex-boyfriend, who removed himself from her life for years before inexplicably returning. Betty struggles with her conflicted feelings for Tom as well as her physical attraction to fellow agent Gil Richardson. Meanwhile, there seems to be a mole intent on sabotaging Control missions as it sets its sights on the World Order Cabal, an organization that’s been around for centuries. Readers hoping for cover-to-cover espionage action, though, may be a little disappointed. Betty is unquestionably a stellar agent—a black belt in jujitsu who’s equally adept with a sniper’s rifle—but the story spends a great deal of time on events prior to her recruitment, including her relationship with Tom before he’s injured on assignment in Iraq. Mahler’s nonlinear story bounces from the present day to various flashbacks, but these energetic time jumps remain comprehensible throughout. The author also maintains a consistent level of mystery: readers eventually learn, for example, why a woman named Jil Harper is Betty’s former best friend as well as details behind the brutal murder of José Silva, Betty’s post-Tom fiance. Mahler too often lingers on Betty’s attempts to resist Gil’s physical allure—it’s perfectly clear that the two have enticing, “sculpted” bodies. But he also shows how Betty proves to be a formidable agent as she goes after significant players in the World Order Cabal. Along the way, he drops in a few good background elements, including the origins of both major spy organizations. At the same time, the story leaves some unanswered questions, such as the mole’s identity, which Mahler may be saving for a sequel.
An often engaging tale of a woman who’s just as comfortable with melodrama as she is with harrowing espionage.Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9882628-0-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: White Bradford Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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