A generally well-written, fast-paced thriller that follows in the footsteps of The Da Vinci Code and Indiana Jones.
A novel of danger and adventure about an archaeological discovery that threatens to rewrite biblical history.
Amberg’s (America’s Fool, 2012, etc.) thriller takes readers to Turkey, where Joe Travers, a former Motorola executive, visits an archaeological site funded in part by his friend’s foundation. Joe finds the project riven by conflicts between Sophia Altay, the Turkish-French lead archaeologist, who quickly wins him over; Leopold Kirchburg, the Austrian project director with a considerable ego; and Charles Lee, who represents right-wing foundations that provide much of the financial support. The archaeologists discover an ossuary containing relics and documents that could substantially change humanity’s understanding of early Christianity. The search for the ossuary’s contents—which were hidden by Sophia’s devoted assistant, Abrahim—drives much of the book’s plot. Scenes of beatings, killings, and chases are punctuated by moments of extreme emotion; for example, at one point, Joe is “already in a quandary, the balance between the breathtaking beauty of the day and the sordid affairs of men not at all clear”; at another, Abrahim’s “blood boils—the Janissary blood, the blood of his lost ancestors, the wanderers and cave dwellers alike.” In Joe, Amberg offers a narrator who’s a keen observer, which allows the story to blend archaeological intrigue with a sharply drawn portrait of urban and rural Turkey. There are some clever turns of phrase, as when Joe notes that a document displayed on a computer screen is “illuminated in a way that would shock medieval monks.” However, there’s also a tendency to overuse terms such as “priapism” and “acorn cracker.” The author keeps the tension high, however, as Joe rushes to sort out everyone’s motivations and loyalties. Readers will be too caught up in unraveling the plot to wonder about the unanswered questions regarding the ossuary’s contents.
A generally well-written, fast-paced thriller that follows in the footsteps of The Da Vinci Code and Indiana Jones.Pub Date: March 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-1937484279
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Amika Press
Review Posted Online: April 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
This large, stately, and intensely powerful new novel by the author of Terms of Endearment and The Last Picture Show is constructed around a cattle drive—an epic journey from dry, hard-drinking south Texas, where a band of retired Texas Rangers has been living idly, to the last outpost and the last days of the old, unsettled West in rough Montana. The time is the 1880s. The characters are larger than life and shimmer: Captain Woodrow Call, who leads the drive, is the American type of an unrelentingly righteous man whose values are puritanical and pioneering and whose orders, which his men inevitably follow, lead, toward the end, to their deaths; talkative Gus McCrae, Call's best friend, learned, lenient, almost magically skilled in a crisis, who is one of those who dies; Newt, the unacknowledged 17-year-old son of Captain Call's one period of self-indulgence and the inheritor of what will become a new and kinder West; and whores, drivers, misplaced sheriffs and scattered settlers, all of whom are drawn sharply, engagingly, movingly. As the rag-tag band drives the cattle 3,000 miles northward, only Call fails to learn that his quest to conquer more new territories in the West is futile—it's a quest that perishes as men are killed by natural menaces that soon will be tamed and by half-starved renegades who soon will die at the hands of those less heroic than themselves. McMurtry shows that it is a quest misplaced in history, in a landscape that is bare of buffalo but still mythic; and it is only one of McMurtry's major accomplishments that he does it without forfeiting a grain of the characters' sympathetic power or of the book's considerable suspense. This is a masterly novel. It will appeal to all lovers of fiction of the first order.
Pub Date: June 1, 1985
ISBN: 068487122X
Page Count: 872
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1985
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
