The author’s healthy appetite for merrily killing off any and all of his characters is not enough, alas, to add suspense to...
Fourth novel from French reporter-turned-mystery-writer Grangé (The Stone Council, 2002, etc.), packed chock-full with extreme mutilations.
Believing that you’re not who you seem to be could be considered a trope of bourgeois Parisian life. But young housewife Anna Heymes turns out to be right. Suffering from memory loss, including the inability to recognize her husband, she wonders whether he’s had plastic surgery. Well, one of them has, but it’s not hubby: in the bathroom one day, Anna discovers that her entire face has been smashed and remade. Okay, then, time to scale the balcony and take off in search of the Truth. Meanwhile, back at the cop shop, a cute, idealistic young inspector named Paul and a grizzled, corrupt old flic named Schiffer (whom everyone refers to as the “Cipher”) are on the trail of a serial killer who is butchering redheaded Turkish girls with an intimate ferocity that seems personal. (His techniques include removing their facial features.) As they bumble through the Turkish quarter, the pair begins to suspect that the true culprit may be the Grey Wolves, an elite organization of Turkish guerrillas whose ties to both right-wing politicians and organized crime scare the bejesus out of any potential witnesses. The Turks seem to be looking for a redheaded woman who double-crossed them. The newly liberated Anna, along with a chic psychiatrist sidekick, uncovers a brainwashing plot that has nothing at all to do with the Turks—though she finds she has skills more befitting a trained warrior than a housewife, as well as a red hairline. Soon, most of the characters meet up, and all goes to hell, leaving trails of wretchedly mutilated corpses across a couple of countries.
The author’s healthy appetite for merrily killing off any and all of his characters is not enough, alas, to add suspense to his tale.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-057365-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
A tepid follow-up to The Camel Club (2005), with few surprises.
Helped by a beautiful grifter, the “Camel Club”—the four-man band of conspiracy theorists—returns to battle a threat to national security.
Annabelle Conroy is con-artist extraordinaire; Jerry Bagger, mobster and mark; and Roger Seagraves, master assassin. All come straight from central casting. Seagraves is killing high-level government officials, and Conroy is putting together the con of the century, with Bagger as the target. The mysterious death of a rare-books expert at the Library of Congress launches the story, which splits off at first into two different plotlines. In one, Conroy and her team work their way up to their major score. In the other, the Camel Club investigates the mysterious death of a close friend. Things are slightly more exciting in Conroy’s world. She’s assembling her team, eager to settle an old score by taking down Atlantic City’s most notorious and ruthless casino owner. After a series of capers out west to build their bankroll, the team heads back east. There’s little drama Players act out their part; marks fall. The big score comes off without a hitch. The two plots intersect halfway through. Annabelle arrives in D.C., thanks to an awkward development, along with a new piece of unfinished business. Seagraves and the Camel Club are engaged in a cat-and-mouse game, and Annabelle Conroy is the special guest star. The merged stories reach a predictable conclusion. An obvious conflict remains unresolved for much of the way, setting up the next chapter in the saga.
A tepid follow-up to The Camel Club (2005), with few surprises.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2006
ISBN: 0-446-53109-X
Page Count: 448
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2006
Box handles this foolproof formula with complete assurance, keeping the pot at a full boil until the perfunctory,...
The creator of Wyoming Fish and Game Warden Joe Pickett (Breaking Point, 2013, etc.) works the area around Yellowstone National Park in this stand-alone about a long-haul trucker with sex and murder on his mind.
The Lizard King, as he calls himself, normally targets lot lizards—prostitutes who work the parking lots adjacent to the rest stops that dot interstate highways. But he’s more than happy to move up to a higher class of victim when he runs across the Sullivan sisters. Danielle, 18, and Gracie, 16, are supposed to be driving from their mother’s home in Denver to their father’s in Omaha, but Danielle has had the bright idea of heading instead to Bozeman, Mont., to visit her boyfriend, Justin Hoyt. Far from home, their whereabouts known to only a few people, the girls are the perfect victims even before they nearly collide with the Lizard King’s rig and Danielle flips him off. Hours later, very shortly after he’s caught up with them in the depths of Yellowstone and done his best to eradicate every trace of his abduction, Justin, worried that Danielle refused his last phone call, tells his father that something bad has happened. Cody Hoyt, an investigator for the Lewis and Clark County Sheriff’s Department, is already having a tough day: At the insistence of his crooked boss, Sheriff Tubman, his longtime student and new partner, Cassandra Dewell, has just caught him planting evidence in an unrelated murder, and he’s been suspended from his job. If he’s lost his badge, though, Cody’s got plenty of time on his hands to drive downstate and meet with State Trooper Rick Legerski, the ex-husband of his dispatcher’s sister, to talk about what to do next. And so the countdown begins.
Box handles this foolproof formula with complete assurance, keeping the pot at a full boil until the perfunctory, anticlimactic and unsatisfactory ending.Pub Date: July 30, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-312-58320-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
BOOK TO SCREEN
© 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.
