The illusions of a family and its close-knit town constructed and demolished on a truly epic scale.
by Jo Nesbø ; translated by Robert Ferguson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 10, 2020
The latest stand-alone from the chronicler of Inspector Harry Hole puts all the murky, violent twists on brotherly love that you’d expect from this leading exponent of Nordic noir.
Roy Calvin Opgard has always been joined at the hip to his kid brother, Carl Abel Opgard, though not in the ways you’d expect. Carl was clearly his father’s favorite, and years ago he left Norway for Canada, where he made quite the reputation as an entrepreneur, while Roy stayed behind to run a petrol station his dreams merely stretched to owning. When Carl returns to Os, it’s with a beautiful bride, Barbados-born Shannon Alleyne, and an ambitious plan to build the Os Spa and Mountain Hotel on land the brothers inherited when their parents plunged to their deaths in the prized Cadillac Raymond Opgard bought from conniving Willum Willumsen. But there’s more to Carl’s noble-sounding scheme to finance the project by distributing ownership shares among the townsfolk than he lets on. And Carl’s return to his hometown unearths long-simmering tensions between the brothers and threatens to reveal long-buried secrets about the deaths of their parents, the disappearance long ago of sheriff Sigmund Olsen, whose son, Kurt, now holds the sheriff’s job, and the checkered sexual histories of both Carl and Roy. Nesbø peels away the secrets surrounding Carl’s project, his backstory, and his connections to his old neighbors so methodically that most readers, like frogs in a gradually warming pan of water, will take quite a while to realize just how extensive, wholesale, and disturbing those secrets really are.
The illusions of a family and its close-knit town constructed and demolished on a truly epic scale.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-65541-1
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
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by Daniel Silva ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 19, 2022
Silva’s latest Gabriel Allon novel is a bit of a throwback—in the best possible way.
One-time assassin and legendary spymaster Gabriel Allon has finally retired. After saying farewell to his friends and colleagues in Israel, he moves with his wife, Chiara, and their two young children to a piano nobile overlooking Venice’s Grand Canal. His plan is to return to the workshop where he learned to restore paintings as an employee—but only after he spends several weeks recovering from the bullet wound that left him dead for several minutes in The Cellist (2021). Of course, no one expects Gabriel to entirely withdraw from the field, and, sure enough, a call from his friend and occasional asset Julian Isherwood sends him racing around the globe on the trail of art forgers who are willing to kill to protect their extremely lucrative enterprise. Silva provides plenty of thrills and, as usual, offers a glimpse into the lifestyles of the outrageously wealthy. In the early books in this series, it was Gabriel’s work as an art restorer that set him apart from other action heroes, and his return to that world is the most rewarding part of this installment. It is true that, at this point in his storied career, Gabriel has become a nearly mythic figure. And Silva is counting on a lot of love—and willing suspension of disbelief—when Gabriel whips up four old master canvases that fool the world’s leading art experts as a lure for the syndicate selling fake paintings. That said, as Silva explains in an author’s note, the art market is rife with secrecy, subterfuge, and wishful thinking, in no small part because it is almost entirely unregulated. And, if anyone can crank out a Titian, a Tintoretto, a Gentileschi, and a Veronese in a matter of days, it’s Gabriel Allon. The author’s longtime fans may breathe a sigh of relief that this entry is relatively free of politics and the pandemic is nowhere in sight.
A smart summer escape.Pub Date: July 19, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-283485-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Harper
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
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by Ruth Ware ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 12, 2022
Ten years after having discovered her Oxford roommate’s dead body in front of the fireplace in their room, a young woman struggles with the realization that she may have helped send the wrong man to prison.
Hannah Jones arrives at Oxford hardly believing that she’s been accepted into this haven of learning and wealth. Sharing a picturesque set of rooms with the flamboyant and beautiful April Clarke-Cliveden, she divides her time between rigorous studying and energetic socializing with Emily Lippmana, Ryan Coates, Hugh Bland, and Will de Chastaigne, with whom she shares an attraction even though he's April’s boyfriend. It’s a good life except for the increasingly creepy interactions she has with John Neville, one of the porters. When Hannah finds April dead one night just after she’s seen Neville coming down the stairs from their rooms, it’s her testimony that puts him in jail. Ware divides the novel into alternating “before” and “after” chapters, with the narrative of Hannah’s college experience unfolding parallel to the events of her life nearly a decade later, when she’s married to Will and pregnant with their first child. Then Neville dies in prison and Hannah hears from a reporter who thinks he might actually have been innocent. Hannah begins to wonder herself, and she plunges back into the past to see if she can figure out what really happened that night. As usual with Ware, the novel is well crafted—the setting, characters, and dialogue are all engaging—but it lacks the author's signature sense of urgent and imminent threat. The novel unfolds smoothly, providing a few twists and turns, as the reader might expect, but not really delivering any true suspense. It also lacks the contrast between a luxurious background and the characters’ fears that Ware has often played to great effect. She does offer a deeper dive into the trauma of the survivors than she usually does, but this isn't the breathless page-turner one has come to expect from Ware.
Delightfully readable fiction, but the mystery disappoints.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-9821-5526-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 22, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
Categories: SUSPENSE | THRILLER | SUSPENSE | PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | GENERAL FICTION
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