At one end le Carré, at the other Higgins himself (Edge of Danger, 2001, etc.), who yields to no one in mindless plotting.
Superhero Dillon gets his villain, saving us all from heaven knows what.
Beautiful billionaire terrorist Kate Rashid should have gone back to terrorist school for a refresher in Security 101. Scheming Kate just can't seem to keep those nefarious plans to herself. Eager to blow up a certain bridge in southern Arabia (“I want to create chaos”), she mouths off in an Irish pub that, as even a journeyman bomb-thrower will tell you, constitutes a security leak begging to become a flood. Within minutes her plan's details are known to Sean Dillon, counterterrorist extraordinaire, who takes the steps necessary to foil it. That is, he collects a couple of AK-47’s, a couple of Brownings, a helper to watch his back, and a plane to jump out of when the time is right—all the assault team he needs to put a whole army of Kate's simpletons in body-bags. But why was wicked Kate so intent on blowing up that bridge? Well, oil pipes run alongside, you see, and if these were to be destroyed, the world's oil supplies would suffer a devastating blow. And why does that matter to Machiavellian Kate? She figures it would so besmirch US President Cazelet's reputation that his place in history would be permanently downgraded. She holds Cazelet, Dillon and friends responsible for the deaths of her three cherished brothers, cold-blooded killers all, and though her retribution-of-choice might seem roundabout to some, to Iago-like Kate it's an eye for an eye. At any rate, Dillon stymies her, setting the stage for the obligatory showdown: Dillon vs. Kate, mano a womano, and you will go a long way to match the absurdity with which this denouement plays out.
At one end le Carré, at the other Higgins himself (Edge of Danger, 2001, etc.), who yields to no one in mindless plotting.Pub Date: March 4, 2002
ISBN: 0-399-14833-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2002
Readers craving some nod at redemption may have to be satisfied with rough justice.
A bleak drama of rural America that offers grim lessons but minimal hope.
In a small-town park, Izzy and Junie, two 12-year-old girls, meet a grisly end. Junie’s fading consciousness sheds no light on the murderer’s identity. This is Engel’s second adult novel (after The Roanoke Girls, 2017) to unfold in a meth-ridden, dying town. The setting is somewhere in Missouri, but this could be any American town, in any area left behind by the concentration of wealth and the exodus of youth. In towns like the aptly christened Barren Springs, many young people never make it out, and Junie’s single mother, Eve Taggert, is one of these. The deck is stacked against Eve and her brother, Cal, from birth—in a trailer in a remote “holler” to a drug-addicted mother who starves them, abuses them, but manages to instill in them fierce family loyalty and an implacable eye-for-an-eye mentality. Now in their 30s, Cal and Eve have succeeded up to a point: Each has a small apartment in town; Cal is a cop, and Eve works as a waitress. Thanks to Eve’s efforts, Junie had a modicum of a normal life and a best friend, Izzy, daughter of Zach and Jenny, who by Barren Springs standards are middle class. Through a fog of grief, Eve vows to find the killer and begins tracking the short list of suspects. These include her violent ex-boyfriend, Jimmy Ray, and his meth-cooking sidekick, strip club bartender Matt. An unforeshadowed revelation about Zach halfway through adds nothing to the suspense—instead, we are brought up short, wondering how a first-person narrator like Eve, blunt, plainspoken, and obsessed with the truth, could conceal this glaring fact from herself for half the book. In fact, her unerring instincts will lead to a completely unexpected conclusion. These pages are replete with lessons about the choices women have in such environments—that is to say, none, except to toughen up or give up.
Readers craving some nod at redemption may have to be satisfied with rough justice.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4595-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
For once Deaver takes more effort to establish his hero’s bona fides than to give him a compelling and logical plot. The...
Veteran thrillmeister Deaver kicks off a new series about a man who collects rewards for a living.
Don’t call Colter Shaw a private eye, or a freelance investigator, or even a soldier of fortune, though his job includes elements of all three. The son of a cranky survivalist who died years ago amid suspicious circumstances, light-footed Shaw has returned close to his childhood home in the Bay Area in the hope of claiming the $10,000 Frank Mulliner is offering for the return of his daughter, Sophie, a college student who stormed out after the two of them fought over the FOR SALE sign outside his house and hasn’t been seen since. Shaw, who has the cool-headed but irritating habit of calculating the numerical odds on every possibility, thinks there’s a 60 percent chance that Sophie’s dead, “murdered by a serial killer, rapist or a gang wannabe.” Even though he accepts rewards only for rescues, not recoveries, he begins sorting through the scant evidence, quickly gets a hot lead about Sophie’s fate, and just as quickly realizes that Detective Dan Wiley, of the Joint Major Crimes Task Force, should have followed exactly the same clues days ago. (The rapidly shifting relations between Shaw and the law, in fact, are a particular high point here.) The day after Shaw’s search for Sophie comes to a violent end, he’s already, in the time-honored manner of Deaver’s bulldog heroes (The Burial Hour, 2017, etc.), on the trail of a second abduction, that of LGBT activist Henry Thompson. Readers who haven’t skipped the prologue will know that still a third kidnap victim, very pregnant Elizabeth Chabelle, will need to be rescued the following day. Thompson’s grief-stricken partner, Brian Byrd, tells Shaw, “It’s like this guy’s playing some goddamn sick game”—a remark Deaver’s fans will know to give just as much weight as Shaw himself does.
For once Deaver takes more effort to establish his hero’s bona fides than to give him a compelling and logical plot. The results are subpar for this initial installment but more encouraging for the promised series.Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-53594-2
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
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