A sometimes-riveting historical tableau that’s hampered by clumsy execution.
In this third installment in a series, two former New York City Cops attempt to help World War I armistice talks come to a peaceful conclusion.
As the Great War draws to an end, a peace conference begins in Paris, dominated by President Woodrow Wilson’s sparkling rhetoric, which foretells global harmony and a permanent cessation of war. However, conflict and chaos still reign—a dangerous cacophony of revolution and terrorism, intelligently depicted by Hockenberry in the final installment of his World War One Intrigue trilogy. He brings back Paul Keller and Gil Martin, two ex-policemen from New York and former members of the department’s elite bomb squad who serve bravely as intelligence officers in Europe. They’re assigned to help guarantee that the fragile armistice will hold. Paul is commanded to infiltrate a group of “ultra-nationalist” operatives called the Freikorps, a paramilitary group of former members of the German army; they’re obsessed with maintaining Germany’s sovereignty and crushing a Communist insurgency. Meanwhile, Gil is sent to Paris to work for diplomat Edward House, President Wilson’s personal adviser and the “chief architect of the peace.” His job is to root out violent opposition in whatever form—be it from anarchists, Communists, violent German nationalists, or even the Allies, some of whom would prefer to exact revenge on Germany. Over the course of the novel, the author paints a lucid and astute portrait of postwar turbulence, which he portrays as more of a continuation of war by other means than a détente. However, Hockenberry’s prose is once again clunky, breathlessly melodramatic, and cluttered with shopworn clichés, as when Keller contemplates Germany’s predicament: “Would the Communists, now rising up to control the capital, take over as they had in Russia? Not if he could help it.” Nonetheless, the book still provides readers with a rigorously researched look into a neglected aspect of the First World War.
A sometimes-riveting historical tableau that’s hampered by clumsy execution.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 609
Publisher: HN Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Falls short of Crichton’s many blockbusters, but fun reading nonetheless, especially for those interested in the early days...
In 1876, professor Edward Cope takes a group of students to the unforgiving American West to hunt for dinosaur fossils, and they make a tremendous discovery.
William Jason Tertullius Johnson, son of a shipbuilder and beneficiary of his father’s largess, isn’t doing very well at Yale when he makes a bet with his archrival (because every young man has one): accompany “the bone professor” Othniel Marsh to the West to dig for dinosaur fossils or pony up $1,000, but Marsh will only let Johnson join if he has a skill they can use. They need a photographer, so Johnson throws himself into the grueling task of learning photography, eventually becoming proficient. When Marsh and the team leave without him, he hitches a ride with another celebrated paleontologist, Marsh’s bitter rival, Edward Cope. Despite warnings about Indian activity, into the Judith badlands they go. It’s a harrowing trip: they weather everything from stampeding buffalo to back-breaking work, but it proves to be worth it after they discover the teeth of what looks to be a giant dinosaur, and it could be the discovery of the century if they can only get them back home safely. When the team gets separated while transporting the bones, Johnson finds himself in Deadwood and must find a way to get the bones home—and stay alive doing it. The manuscript for this novel was discovered in Crichton’s (Pirate Latitudes, 2009, etc.) archives by his wife, Sherri, and predates Jurassic Park (1990), but if readers are looking for the same experience, they may be disappointed: it’s strictly formulaic stuff. Famous folk like the Earp brothers make appearances, and Cope and Marsh, and the feud between them, were very real, although Johnson is the author’s own creation. Crichton takes a sympathetic view of American Indians and their plight, and his appreciation of the American West, and its harsh beauty, is obvious.
Falls short of Crichton’s many blockbusters, but fun reading nonetheless, especially for those interested in the early days of American paleontology.Pub Date: May 23, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-247335-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
Fun for fans of fictional mayhem.
Revenge is the order of the day in this action-packed Gray Man thriller.
That freelance assassin Court Gentry has enemies shocks no one. Code-named Violator in his CIA days, he has since become the Gray Man, so elusive that some think him a myth. He’s not complicated: “If I’ve got pants on, I’ve got a gun on,” he describes himself succinctly. In this episode, everybody wants something. James Westwood wants to be senator and eventually president, and isn’t above committing treason to get there. Two fearsome killers, each with his own agenda, want Gentry dead. Gentry himself wants to get to Russia for contract work, but first he must get out of Bulgaria, where he kills Northern Irish criminal Charlie Coyle in a gunfight. Hyperline Level IIIA body armor saves Gentry’s life in that encounter, but now he must face Charlie’s dad, Campbell Coyle, whose “one singular objective in life” is to come to America and cut a bloody swath to exact deadly revenge on “the man who had murdered his son.” The elder Coyle is a “bad man with a dark history, and he came from a long line of men with dark histories.” Yet he understands how much he and the Gray Man have in common, that they are both “God’s living proof” that humans have not progressed in 800 years. There’s also Lancer, a dangerous former Navy SEAL turned assassin who says that “Court Gentry is the man who put me in prison in Cuba, and he’s gonna pay.” Meanwhile, series regular Zack Hightower spies on his biological daughter. He means no harm but simply wants to know that she’s well, but what follows is one damn thing after another. At first it looks like a separate plot line, but everything comes back to the Gray Man. The story is nearly 500 pages of gunfire, explosions, a spring-loaded wrist stiletto, treason, vengeance, blood, bodies, and a teenage girl who loves her adoptive father and doesn’t know bio dad even exists.
Fun for fans of fictional mayhem.Pub Date: Feb. 17, 2026
ISBN: 9780593954812
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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