A well-paced espionage tale that centers on the slow unraveling of a complex mystery.
A newly elected U.S. congressman, before he’s ever sworn in, travels to Europe to uncover his family’s secret history as Lithuanian resistance fighters in Fenzel’s (The Lazarus Covenant, 2009) thriller.
Illinois congressman-elect Daniel Tory, a mere week after his victory, heads to his old neighborhood in Chicago. He’s saddened by the passing of his beloved Uncle Jonas, but even more shaken by a photograph he finds near his uncle’s body. It shows a much younger Jonas; Daniel’s mother, Tanya; and another man, all dressed in what appear to be Soviet Army uniforms. Tanya won’t explain the picture, and Daniel later learns that Jonas, who came from a family of Lithuanian émigrés, was actually a closet millionaire who left him millions. Jonas’ safe deposit box reveals more: a diary from Daniel’s father, Lucas, who died decades ago in a Soviet prison without knowing his son, and considerably more funds in Swiss bank accounts. Hoping for answers, Daniel flies to Switzerland—Jonas left him a custom jet—with just-appointed, multilingual Chief of Staff Robin Nielsen, who translates Lucas’ journal. Awaiting him in Geneva is the Tory Foundation, an organization pitted squarely against Russia. Daniel, as the foundation’s new leader, is now an apparent Kremlin target. He also catches wind of a potential Russian invasion of the Baltics. With help from friends and the CIA, he dodges assassins and tries to prevent a third world war. Fenzel manages a steady pace for his protagonist, whose adventure necessitates further flights to Moscow and Vilnius, Lithuania. Along the way, there are quite a few plot bombshells. The intermittent appearances of Lucas’ journal entries are surprisingly riveting as they tell the story of two brothers who battle Soviet soldiers and steal Nazi gold. The story is hampered by unmistakable errors, though, including muddled dates for Lucas’ birth year and when exactly the Soviets imprisoned him. Fenzel bolsters the tale with a predictable but welcome romance between Daniel and Robin, as well as credible action: after all, jumping from a moving train is far from easy for an untrained, inexperienced protagonist, and it’s not something that Daniel would like to repeat.
A well-paced espionage tale that centers on the slow unraveling of a complex mystery.Pub Date: July 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9822379-1-5
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Breathe Press
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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