A slow but riveting tale with rigorous ties to real-world events.
In this thriller series opener, a covert Irish Republican Army member becomes part of a planned bombing in London, which agencies are scrambling to prevent.
“Cleanskin” Michael McCann, with no obvious link to the Republican movement, is on a secret IRA mission. He’s had eyes on Sarah Price for some time before making contact—or, rather, waiting at a London cafe for the woman to start a conversation. His real interest, however, is her older sister, Karen Wallace. Karen’s significance isn’t immediately revealed, but it’s linked to an impending strike by the resurgent IRA, over 50 simultaneous attacks on the 100th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising. MI5 recruiter Neill McCormac, meanwhile, on a joint team of MI5 and Irish intelligence agencies, is working a case on Joe Gorman, the de facto head of the revived IRA. Joe’s under heavy surveillance (even his main driver’s bugged), but Frank O’Neill’s the true mastermind behind the secret operation, so even Joe doesn’t have all the details, including Michael’s identity. Knowing of the attack but initially unaware of its date, the agencies eventually develop a “Cleanskin theory.” Soon, Michael suspects someone’s surveilling him, but he can’t be careful for too long with Easter on the horizon. There’s little action in Benacre’s (McCann, 2015) story, but heaps of intrigue and espionage. McCormac and the team’s guesswork, for example, on the possible types of attack (biological, cyber, etc.) is an apt display of the investigation’s thoroughness. The plot’s rich in history and character back story, like Frank and half brother Pat’s violent past in Dublin, before and through the Troubles. Michael, too, is captivating, easily manipulating people (it’s essential Karen seduce him, not the other way around) and making post-bombing plans he hides from Frank. Nevertheless, some of what Michael does is decidedly less engaging: he deems waitress Ghadir one of his “key objectives,” but their sexual relationship is for his personal benefit. The ending, which perfectly sets up the sequel, is also somewhat anticlimactic.
A slow but riveting tale with rigorous ties to real-world events.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-5327-4460-0
Page Count: 717
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 6, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Piercingly effective and genuinely terrifying.
A savage debut thriller that renders the Electra complex electric, the mother/daughter bond a psychopathic stranglehold.
Camille Preaker is a cutter. At 13, she carved “queasy” above her navel, at 29, “vanish” on her neck. In the intervening years, she etched her entire epidermis from the chin down with cries for help. Entertainment Weekly TV critic Flynn discloses this information 60 pages into her explosive novel; before that, we know Camille as a hard-drinking, good-looking Jimmy Breslin wannabe, sent by a second-tier paper to cover two gruesome killings in her Missouri hometown. Nine-year-old Natalie’s corpse was found jammed between the Cut-n-Curl Beauty Parlor and Bifty’s Hardware nine months after another’s girl’s body was dumped in a creek. The murderer’s grisly signature? Both strangled corpses had their teeth yanked out. As she snoops around, Camille gets hot for a cute detective and anxious in her mother’s house. Haunted by the ghost of her sister, a child felled by mysterious illness, Camille warily befriends half-sister Amma, a snaky Lolita with precociously developed smarts and breasts. Bite-sized Queen of Mean who rules the town’s teens, Amma joins Camille in shuddering at their mother, Aurora, an oh-so-proper virago who pulls down a million dollars a year running a pig slaughterhouse. Mommie Dearest is afflicted with an outré psychological disturbance: She inflicts illness on her loved ones to then prove her sweetness by nursing them. Could she be the slayer? Or perhaps an even more hideous revelation awaits? Flynn delivers a great whodunit, replete with hinting details, telling dialogue, dissembling clues. Better yet, she offers appalling, heartbreaking insight into the darkness of her women’s lives: the Stepford polish of desperate housewives, the backstabbing viciousness of drug-gobbling, sex-for-favors Mean Girls, the simmering rage bound to boil over.
Piercingly effective and genuinely terrifying.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2006
ISBN: 0-307-34154-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Shaye Areheart/Harmony
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
As the plot grows more complicated, it also sheds believability, leaving sex and witty banter to carry the day.
Brown (Mean Streak, 2014, etc.) ticks off the boxes that elevate her books to the bestseller lists in this sexy romantic thriller set in Texas.
Rock-jawed hero with a dark past: check. Strong-willed, beautiful woman who resists his charms: check. A Whitman’s Sampler of bad guys: check. And finally, a convoluted and not always plausible plot: check. In this latest outing, readers meet TV journalist Kerra Bailey, whose family was torn apart years ago by a hotel bombing that killed 197 people in Dallas. Just in time for the 25th anniversary, Kerra scores an interview with the notoriously private Maj. Trapper, who saved her life, among others, when he emerged from the blast to lead the survivors out of danger. There's an iconic, prizewinning photo of the major carrying a little girl from the wreckage, but the child has never been identified—until now, when Kerra goes public with the information that it was her. Just after they finish filming the interview in his home, the major is shot, and an injured Kerra escapes in the confusion. The major’s son, disgraced Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent John Trapper—a name M*A*S*H fans will appreciate—steps in, igniting a chain of events that leads to murder, intrigue, betrayal, and a series of dark revelations. As with most of Brown’s heroes and heroines, there’s palpable sexual tension between Trapper, whose taut rear occupies ample literary real estate, and Kerra, who when dealing with Trapper feels “like he’d lightly scratched her just below her bellybutton” when he’s not making her “pleasure points throb.” The complex plot plays out in a round of reveals that don’t always make a lot of sense, but that’s not why Brown’s fans read her books. They check in for the witty, pitch-perfect dialogue and fluid writing. A master of her genre, Brown knows how to please her most ardent readers but relies too often on the same basic formula from novel to novel.
As the plot grows more complicated, it also sheds believability, leaving sex and witty banter to carry the day.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4555-7210-6
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
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