A novel with formidable villains and plentiful action and suspense.
Two government operatives investigate a series of anti-Semitic murders that apparently involve Islamic State terrorists in Winnick’s (East Wind, 2015, etc.) latest series thriller.
A massacre of five children at a Los Angeles Jewish day school shocks police officers, and a discarded note in Arabic at the scene, allegedly signed “ISIS” (or “ISIL”), implies that more Jewish victims may die in the future. Authorities opt to bring in former FBI agent Lara Edmond, now with the Joint Terrorism Task Force, and Mossad agent Uri Levin, both of whom were pivotal years ago in thwarting a nuclear attack in America. At that time, Lara and Uri wound up in bed together—and even fell in love—but they haven’t seen each other in the last three years. A popular rabbi is soon the killers’ next target. In response, Lara responds to Muslim clerics’ online ads, offering herself up as an American bride; it’s a ploy to gain potential intel, as wives of jihadists have previously been actively involved in their husbands’ illicit deeds. Uri, meanwhile, plays the role of an escaped terrorist lying low in Los Angeles. It turns out, however, that they’re both already in danger, as the people behind the LA attacks know that the two are in the city—and the group has a larger, more destructive plan in the works. Winnick’s returning protagonists are as crafty and able-bodied as before; Lara, at one point, warns a man not to underestimate her physically—and breaks something to demonstrate why. But the villains, amply covered here, particularly stand out. Their murder scheme, for starters, is devious and effective; it’s clearly meant as a distraction, but the group’s ultimate goal isn’t so easy for agents (or readers) to decipher. When the bad guys adapt when something goes awry, it shows both their guile and determination. Lara and Uri rekindle their romance, but Winnick smartly keeps it on the back burner, focusing instead on the investigation. Interestingly, a few minor characters also take up a bit of the spotlight, including one introduced late in the story.
A novel with formidable villains and plentiful action and suspense.Pub Date: Aug. 24, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5372-7459-1
Page Count: 306
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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BOOK REVIEW
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