What-will-happen-next reading best approached after picking up the series’ first two entries.
In this third of this much-like Downton Abbey series, Archer (Sins of the Father, 2012, etc.) takes the Clifton Chronicles into the post–World War II era.
Employing a prologue, Archer slaps a final coat of paint on Volume 2, with the Lord Chancellor awarding the Barrington title to Harry’s brother-in-arms, Giles, a Labor MP. Harry and Emma, Giles' sister, are finally free to marry. The two already have an out-of-wedlock son, Sebastian. In this installment, Emma and Harry discover Emma’s cad of a father sired a young girl now living at a local orphanage. The Cliftons do the paperwork and the interviews and adopt Jessica, a budding artist, without revealing to her or Sebastian that she’s blood kin. Meantime, Harry’s become an acclaimed author of detective novels, and Emma meets a Pulitzer Prize–winning author who is impressed with her intellect and decides to help her obtain a degree. When family matriarch Lady Elizabeth dies, she disinherits Giles because he intends to marry Lady Virginia, a greedy, rhymes-with-witchy aristocrat. There’s a divorce when Giles regains his senses and then a family reconciliation. And much more. Archer spins sufficient narrative threads for six novels, complete with ample money, Old-Boy connections, intrigue and a deus ex machina.
What-will-happen-next reading best approached after picking up the series’ first two entries.Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-250-00098-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Gardner (The Killing Hour, 2003, etc.) tends to overplot, but as always the strength of her characters keeps the pages...
A straight-arrow cop gets entangled with a crooked lady and—surprise!—rues the day.
Bobby Dodge likes his job as a sniper with the Massachusetts State Police Special Tactics squad, a SWAT unit. He likes his girlfriend Susan, a beautiful and talented musician. In short, Bobby likes his life until the night Catherine Gagnon drops into it. What appears at first not much more than a run-of-the-mill domestic disturbance—husband screaming at cowering wife—suddenly escalates when the screaming husband has a gun and the cowering wife is wrapped protectively around a terrified child. There’s no time for anything but trained instinct when Bobby, watching through the scope of his rifle, sees Jimmy Gagnon’s finger tightening on the trigger. It’s a righteous shot, an act that saved the lives of Catherine and her young son, Bobby insists. Most agree at first. In the days that follow, however, minds change. Catherine, it seems, has a past; she also has the kind of beauty that unsettles as readily as it attracts. She’s a dangerous woman, Bobby is warned. Before long, he realizes that as a manipulator she can take her place with the best of history’s dark ladies. And that maybe the shooting wasn’t so righteous after all.
Gardner (The Killing Hour, 2003, etc.) tends to overplot, but as always the strength of her characters keeps the pages turning.Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2005
ISBN: 0-553-80253-4
Page Count: 346
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2004
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