An absorbing story about a criminal conspiracy and the moral evolution of the man who tries to uncover it.
A British expat in Thailand working in the metals industry falls victim to a massive fraud and becomes obsessed with tracking down the culprit in Waller’s thriller.
In 1973, Bill Thomas lives in Bangkok, Thailand, works for Worldmetal Inc., and enjoys a good, undemanding life—he is well paid for moderately difficult work and spends much of his free time chasing women and partaking in the services of local sex workers. His placidly complacent existence is upended when a new supplier of tin ore, Panversal Mining, fraudulently ships one of Worldmetal’s client’s ilmenite instead, a much cheaper metal that is difficult to immediately distinguish from tin ore. The brilliantly executed scheme costs Worldmetal half a million dollars, a not insignificant sum of money, even for such a sizable firm. Bill is incensed by the deception and feels compelled to find those responsible, a first flirtation with moral gravity sensitively depicted by the author: “It was the first time in his life that he had been faced with a real challenge. It would mean a lot to his self-esteem if he succeeded.” Bill recruits the help of police Maj. Gen. Pramarn Nitisak, Chief of Suppression of Smuggling Bureau and the uncle of Noo, “a vivacious wide-eyed pixie of a girl,” who provokes in Bill another new emotion—romantic seriousness. The machinations of the crime can be dauntingly complicated for the reader, but they’re never impenetrably convoluted. More importantly, the drama of Bill’s quest to serve justice, a suspenseful pursuit filled with murder and kidnapping, is paired with the equally gripping arc about Bill’s maturation from a playboy to a person of some moral worth. Waller sketches a fascinating tableau of expatriate life in Bangkok, a place filled with beauty and illicit temptations. This is a thoughtfully rendered crime drama, rich in psychological subtlety.
An absorbing story about a criminal conspiracy and the moral evolution of the man who tries to uncover it.Pub Date: Nov. 21, 2024
ISBN: 9781982289133
Page Count: 108
Publisher: BalboaPressUK
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.
Who was Shakespeare?
Move over, Earl of Oxford and Francis Bacon: There’s another contender for the true author of plays attributed to the bard of Stratford—Emilia Bassano, a clever, outspoken, educated woman who takes center stage in Picoult’s spirited novel. Of Italian heritage, from a family of court musicians, Emilia was a hidden Jew and the courtesan of a much older nobleman who vetted plays to be performed for Queen Elizabeth. She was well traveled—unlike Shakespeare, she visited Italy and Denmark, where, Picoult imagines, she may have met Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—and was familiar with court intrigue and English law. “Every gap in Shakespeare’s life or knowledge that has had to be explained away by scholars, she somehow fills,” Picoult writes. Encouraged by her lover, Emilia wrote plays and poetry, but 16th-century England was not ready for a female writer. Picoult interweaves Emilia’s story with that of her descendant Melina Green, an aspiring playwright, who encounters the same sexist barriers to making herself heard that Emilia faced. In alternating chapters, Picoult follows Melina’s frustrated efforts to get a play produced—a play about Emilia, who Melina is certain sold her work to Shakespeare. Melina’s play, By Any Other Name, “wasn’t meant to be a fiction; it was meant to be the resurrection of an erasure.” Picoult creates a richly detailed portrait of daily life in Elizabethan England, from sumptuous castles to seedy hovels. Melina’s story is less vivid: Where Emilia found support from the witty Christopher Marlowe, Melina has a fashion-loving gay roommate; where Emilia faces the ravages of repeated outbreaks of plague, for Melina, Covid-19 occurs largely offstage; where Emilia has a passionate affair with the adoring Earl of Southampton, Melina’s lover is an awkward New York Times theater critic. It’s Emilia’s story, and Picoult lovingly brings her to life.
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780593497210
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
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