Altman (A Game of Spies, 2002, etc.) keeps his multiple balls in the air with deft economy, some twists, and the right ratio...
Modest chase thriller, Altman’s third, with abundant international color and great pace.
An impossibly young-looking assassin (casual passersby think he’s a boy) efficiently carries out his contract on the Epstein couple only to realize a moment later that he’s killed the wrong Epsteins. Cut to the Adriatic Sea and skittish, single Hannah Gray in her tiny cabin aboard the Aurora II. What should be an idyllic cruise is actually a secret escape. Entangled in a Chicago insurance fraud engineered by her no-account boyfriend Frank, Hannah is on the run using the alias Vicky Ludlow. Chirpy fellow passenger Renee Epstein takes “Vicky” under her wing, even hectoring grumpy husband Stephen into lending the young woman his travel guide. In short order, the man-child assassin reappears to kill these second Epsteins, the whole thing witnessed by Hannah, who flees the Aurora II. The chase is on in earnest, with Hannah now a fugitive twice over. The book she received from Stephen Epstein contains a priceless formula, written inside the back cover. Stateside, retrieval of the formula is engineered by brash bureaucrat Keyes, who has a Moneypenny-like assistant named Daisy. Imposing scientist Ed Greenwich is waiting for the formula, which has to do with nothing less than pricking a hole in the space-time continuum, and the Keyes team stays ahead in a sub rosa international race for it. But allegiances are a bit fuzzy. Keyes has colleagues with eastern European names, and he doesn’t trust subordinates. But is it because of their loyalty or their competence? Quick cuts take us from Hannah on the run to Keyes at the home office to his operatives Leonard (the man-child assassin) and Dietz, dispatched to get the formula at all costs.
Altman (A Game of Spies, 2002, etc.) keeps his multiple balls in the air with deft economy, some twists, and the right ratio of verbs to adjectives.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-399-15040-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
