A spy tale that works best as a character study of grief.
A troubled doctor becomes embroiled in a terrorist conspiracy in Purpura’s debut thriller.
In 2024, Vince DeLuca is a skilled obstetric surgeon in Santa Barbara, California, but he’s a depressed, alcoholic, and solitary person in his personal life. When his patient Jackie Carter needs emergency surgery for an ectopic pregnancy, she confesses, in her fentanyl stupor, that her pregnancy was the result of an extramarital affair with a man named Salaam. Vince also finds out that she and her lover are part of a plan to acquire missiles to attack the United States as revenge for the Iraq War. The doctor, who lost his betrothed, Helen, in the 9/11 terror attacks, feels compelled to act, and he brings this information to the FBI. Soon, Special Agent Carolyn Talbot arrives to work with Vince to uncover more information on Jackie and her role in the conspiracy, and an instant attraction sparks between her and the surgeon. Later, Vince finds himself the target of jihadis, and further secrets are revealed as he willingly becomes an informant for both the FBI and CIA. As he helps uncover connections to Jackie’s husband, a military contractor named Brent, he narrowly escapes death himself. Purpura, who’s an obstetrician and gynecologist, has created a sympathetic narrator in Vince, whose dour, piteous characterization believably motivates several rash decisions even as his work as a physician remains pristine. The book’s plot loses its momentum at times as it tries to balance Vince’s personal life with the somewhat far-fetched terrorism plot. Also, although Jackie is important early on, she remains out of the picture for most of the book, as the middle third focuses more on Carolyn and Vince’s relationship. The way that Purpura draws on his medical knowledge in compelling ways and his writing about Vince’s grieving process can be poignant, as when the protagonist wrestles with a new relationship: “I want to watch her think, hear her sarcasm, her innuendos, her confidence—I want all of her. Next to me. Woven inside me.”
A spy tale that works best as a character study of grief.Pub Date: April 17, 2023
ISBN: 9798886450132
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An addictive psychological thriller.
When a mysterious novel appears on her bedside table, a successful documentary filmmaker finds herself face to face with a secret that threatens to unravel life as she knows it.
Catherine Ravenscroft has built a dream life, or close to it: the devoted husband, the house in London, the award-winning career as a documentary filmmaker. And though she’s never quite bonded with her 25-year-old son the way she’d hoped, he’s doing fine—there are worse things than being an electronics salesman. But when she stumbles across a sinister novel called The Perfect Stranger—no one’s quite sure how it came into the house—Catherine sees herself in its pages, living out scenes from her past she’d hoped to forget. It’s a threat—but from whom? And why now, 20 years after the fact? Meanwhile, Stephen Brigstocke, a retired teacher, widowed and in pain, is desperate to exact revenge on Catherine and make her pay for what happened all those years ago. The story is told in alternating chapters, Catherine's in the third-person and Stephen's in the first, as the two orbit each other, predator and prey, and the novel moves between the past and the present to paint a portrait of two troubled families with trauma bubbling under the surface. As their lives become increasingly entangled, Stephen’s obsession grows, Catherine’s world crumbles, and it becomes clear that—in true thriller form—everything may not be as it seems. But how much destruction must be wrought before the truth comes out? And when it does, will there be anything left to salvage? While the long buildup to the big reveal begins to drag, Knight’s elegant plot and compelling (if not unexpected) characters keep the heart of the novel beating even when the pacing falters. Atmospheric and twisting and ripe for TV adaptation, this debut novel never strays far from convention, but that doesn’t make it any less of a page-turner.
An addictive psychological thriller.Pub Date: May 19, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236225-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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