Cheerless, to be sure, but with the core thriller elements of plot and pace managed well enough to make for a promising...
Bleak debut thriller by Metzl, a former UN Human Rights Officer in Cambodia, about the inhumanity endemic to that troubled place.
It’s 1979, and Morgan O’Reilly, a no-nonsense Marine, gets what he first views as a bizarre assignment. He’s to set up a counterintelligence unit in Cambodia’s embattled city of Phnom Penh—composed of street kids! The US-backed Lon Nol army is being whipped by the communist Khmer Rouge, but Morgan’s boss has had this “creative” notion he hopes will slow the process. Phnom Penh is awash in orphans; nobody pays attention to them; and spies are people who can sniff out information mostly because nobody pays attention to them. So, armed with “small incentives”—the promise of decent food, reasonable shelter—Morgan, who speaks the language like a native, hits the streets. His recruiting is surprisingly productive and the team he assembles astonishingly effective. It’s more than a team, really. Morgan and his six resourceful urchins become a family—until the collapse of the American military effort changes everything. Morgan is forced to leave, abandoning all but one child, the boy closest to him, Sophal. Flash forward seven years. Morgan, embittered and cynical, is now a CIA desk officer whose approach to his work is as spiritless as his approach to life. Then he’s visited by Ted Dillon, flashy, ambitious, a member of the White House inner circle, who has a job for him he can’t refuse. Somewhere near the Thai-Cambodian border, Sophal, himself a CIA operative, has gone missing, and Dillon wants Morgan to find him. Morgan is much too savvy to believe that this is the only item on Dillon’s convoluted agenda, but he’s not at all prepared for at least one of the others—as no one could have been.
Cheerless, to be sure, but with the core thriller elements of plot and pace managed well enough to make for a promising start.Pub Date: May 24, 2004
ISBN: 0-312-32202-X
Page Count: 256
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2004
A well-written and well-researched page-turner.
An elite American soldier who is out for vengeance uncovers a menacing terrorist plot.
Retired U.S. Army captain and combat veteran Parnell (Man of War, 2018) delivers the second installment of the adventures of special operative Eric Steele. On the mend from a showdown with a rogue agent, Steele is preparing for a quiet dinner at home with his mother. The wine is quickly forgotten and the steaks start burning when Russian assailants bring the war to his doorstep. Using RPGs, C-4 explosives, and a SAW machine gun, the Russians are after a mysterious package sent from someone deeply connected to Steele’s past. Steele narrowly escapes the attack with his life, but his mother ends up in intensive care. Shoulders heavy with guilt, Steele must use his connections and skills as an Alpha—an elite operator who answers only to the president—to find those responsible for the attack. Pumped up with prescription steroids and with his “keeper” and close friend, Demo, at his side, he takes off for Europe to follow the only clue offered by a former president, who cryptically refers to some off-the-books operation called Cold Storage. The mission becomes increasingly complex, dangerous, and engaging once Steele learns that the attack on his home is tied to assassination plans for some of the world’s most prominent leaders.
A well-written and well-researched page-turner.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-266881-3
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A solid sense of place, a looming sense of menace: a frequently gripping read.
Veste’s moody procedural tells the story of a pair of Liverpool detectives tracking a killer influenced by local mythology.
Louise Henderson, the investigator at the heart of this novel, is a detective with secrets. She keeps some from her partner, DS Shipley; when the book opens, she’s also grappling with moments of sudden and inexplicable terror that leave her unsure of their origin and unsettled by their impact on her. Soon, the detectives take up the case of a woman who escaped a deadly attack—and who believes it was the work of the title character, a local legend who may be a murderer, a supernatural creature, or something else entirely. Not long after that, a dead body shows up, which suggests a connection to an earlier death, but a host of loose ends hang for the detectives to piece together—and there’s also the matter of a series of flashbacks set years earlier, when a teenager vanished. How these seemingly disparate elements connect—sometimes linearly, sometimes via well-made twists—leads the novel to its conclusion. Veste’s slow-burning approach works well, sustaining the sense of general wrongness that gives the narrative so much atmosphere. There are a few heavy-handed moments here and there. “They thought they knew evil. They had no idea” is perhaps the most flagrant example; as this book is either about a serial killer or an urban legend come to life, that sense of menace is already built in to the narrative well enough. But the conclusion is largely satisfying, playing well off the dynamics Veste established over the course of the story.
A solid sense of place, a looming sense of menace: a frequently gripping read.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4926-7129-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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