An ambitious thriller that looks at the gray areas between vengeance and justice, law and morality.
This fast-paced second book in Erickson’s Birds of Flight series continues the story of fugitive Alexander Burns and his family.
After stealing classified government information from the Department of Defense Foreign Intelligence Agency, Burns and his team have been on the run for years. As the book opens, they decide to negotiate with law enforcement officials for their safety, but their careful plans go awry, and Samantha, the woman Burns loves, is killed. Burns instructs her sister Becky to inform their FBI contact that “the ‘dead man switch’ has been pulled….‘The flood is coming.’ ” He then embarks on a mission of vengeance that could have repercussions for every American. He and his team risk their lives to release classified data on the controversial actions of the Foreign Intelligence Agency, which causes a diplomatic crisis. The team wants its freedom, and it’s willing to take down the whole country to get it. It finds unexpected allies within the government; one government operative says that Burns “has been consistent with loyalty to friends….Even when his paramour is killed, he keeps his word to those who keep it with him.” Erickson depicts government agents, spies and rogue operatives as well-rounded characters with discernible inner lives. The novel improves on 2012’s Albatross, the first book in this series, in Erickson’s ability to handle a somewhat convoluted plot without losing the reader. There are just as many explosions and gunfights here, but the overall mood of the work is tenser, and less triumphant, as Burns and his family risk not only their freedom, but their lives.
An ambitious thriller that looks at the gray areas between vengeance and justice, law and morality.Pub Date: Dec. 16, 2012
ISBN: 978-1478715948
Page Count: 366
Publisher: Outskirts Press Inc.
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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