A superlative hero headlines this razor-sharp crime tale.
In this thriller, a wealthy American businessman suspected of murder goes on the run with contract killers at his heels.
Joe Savage is one of the richest men in the United States. As CEO of Omnicon Investments, he lives and works in New York City, with homes in various states and a chateau on the French Riviera. Best of all, he and his beautiful wife, Betty, live a happy life with their 4-year-old son, Mark. But this all comes crashing down one day when Joe awakens in a strange apartment with a body in the bedroom. He has no idea where he is or how he got there. Convinced the police won’t buy that, Joe flees the crime scene. New York City Police Department detective Thomas Bone takes the murder case, with plenty of evidence pointing to a certain CEO. It must be a frame-up, but Joe has nowhere to turn for help. Betty and Mark are his only family, and she and Joe’s friend Peter Turnbull, Omnicon’s finance director, insist the entrepreneur turn himself in and take a guilty plea. Joe refuses to cop to something he didn’t do and instead sets out to prove his innocence. As Bone and New York’s finest comb the city, Joe keeps his head down, trying on disguises and even a new identity. But the authorities aren’t the only ones after him. For some reason, professional killers are gunning for him as well, and they tend to shoot first with nary a warning. Joe fights to stay alive and out of handcuffs long enough to clear his name.
Obomeghie’s novel brims with suspense. Though readers know right away who’s responsible for the murder and the motive, the narrative rolls out surprises, including startling deaths and specifics about the hit men. There’s plenty of action, too. Joe gets involved in foot and car chases, most of the time with assassins packing guns and lots of bullets. The author layers the story with painstaking details about Joe’s opulent lifestyle, a glaring contrast to the protagonist’s grim existence on the streets. He trades in his $3,000 Armani suit for a pair of sneakers, and his stay at a cheap hotel with “dusty, papered walls done in floral patterns” is worlds away from his New York home with million-dollar artworks adorning the walls. Joe will surely earn readers’ sympathy, as he suffers from depression and recurring nightmares from his yearlong captivity in a Viet Cong prison in Vietnam. And Joe’s nemesis Bone, though a smart and capable detective, isn’t the easiest guy to like, too often resorting to bloodshed. Despite all the gunfire, the author keeps the story’s violent scenes in check, even spotlighting the unexpected fallout. For example, readers may cheer when Joe successfully evades armed men, but innocent bystanders aren’t so lucky. Most descriptions, meanwhile, sound like snazzy one-liners, from on-the-lam Joe’s “walking around New York with a face he couldn’t afford” to a cigarette-smoking cop’s “presently ignoring the Surgeon General’s warning.” The story culminates in a gratifying denouement chock-full of resolution.
A superlative hero headlines this razor-sharp crime tale.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-9913830-1-6
Page Count: 492
Publisher: Elliott and Dylan Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Everything you’d expect from Grisham, and this time something more.
After more than three decades of producing bestselling legal thrillers, Grisham tries his hand at a whodunit.
Eleanor Barnett wants Simon Latch to write her a will. That’s pretty much his job description, since practicing law in Braxton, Virginia, for 18 years hasn’t given him much opportunity to spread his wings. But the case of Netty, as she insists he call her, is different. She’s an 85-year-old widow whose second husband, Harry Korsak, left her with something like $20 million in cash and securities. She has a pair of stepsons, Clyde and Jerry Korsak, she’s determined to disinherit. And she already has a will, a document Wally Thackerman drafted a few weeks ago that basically allowed him, as Simon soon discovers, to pillage her estate. So instead of following his usual procedure and asking his longtime secretary, Matilda Clark, to type out the will, Simon types it himself and has it witnessed without saying anything to her. Of course he’d never do what Wally Thackerman did, but given his poverty, his gambling addiction, and his estrangement from his wife, Paula, whose income is a lot more stable than his own, he wouldn’t mind drawing just a bit on Netty’s wealth. As it happens, his new client turns out to be more trouble than she’s worth, maybe even more trouble than she would’ve been worth to Wally. And when she ends up dying, her death is swiftly identified as murder, with every indication that Simon killed her himself. The whodunit is unremarkable, but Grisham handles the legal complexities of the case with professional finesse and adds a wonderfully poignant portrait of a nothingburger lawyer trying his best to keep things more or less legal.
Everything you’d expect from Grisham, and this time something more.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9780385548984
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A standout in the series.
The sixth adventure of Harvard symbology professor Robert Langdon explores the mysteries of human consciousness, the demonic projects of the CIA, and the city of Prague.
“Ladies and gentlemen...we are about to experience a sea change in our understanding of how the brain works, the nature of consciousness, and in fact…the very nature of reality itself.” But first—Langdon’s in love! Brown’s devoted readers first met brilliant noetic scientist Katherine Solomon in The Lost Symbol (2009); she’s back as a serious girlfriend, engaging the committed bachelor in a way not seen before. The book opens with the pair in a luxurious suite at the Four Seasons in Prague. It’s the night after Katherine has delivered the lecture quoted above, setting the theme for the novel, which features a plethora of real-life cases and anomalies that seem to support the notion that human consciousness is not localized inside the human skull. Brown’s talent for assembling research is also evident in this novel’s alter ego as a guidebook to Prague, whose history and attractions are described in great and glowing detail. Whether you appreciate or skim past the innumerable info dumps on these and other topics (Jewish folklore fans—the Golem is in the house!), it goes without saying that concision is not a goal in the Dan Brown editing process. Speaking of editing, the nearly 700-page book is dedicated to Brown’s editor, who seems to appear as a character—to put it in the italicized form used for Brownian insight, Jason Kaufman must be Jonas Faukman! A major subplot involves the theft of Katherine’s manuscript from the secure servers of Penguin Random House; the delightful Faukman continues to spout witty wisecracks even when blindfolded and hogtied. There’s no shortage of action, derring-do, explosions, high-tech torture machines, attempted and successful murders, and opportunities for split-second, last-minute escapes; good thing Langdon, this aging symbology wonk, never misses swimming his morning laps. Readers who are not already dyed-in-the-wool Langdonites may find themselves echoing the prof’s own conclusion regarding the credibility of all this paranormal hoo-ha: At some point, skepticism itself becomes irrational.
A standout in the series.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9780385546898
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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