by John Harte ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 12, 2008
An entertaining, well-written ride into the sunset.
A family shattered by the Civil War and its aftermath makes an arduous journey toward solace and redemption.
Tom, Mary and their teenage son Jack are carving out a life for themselves at the Bar T Ranch in Texas when an old friend from Virginia rides up and convinces Tom to fight for the Confederacy. While Tom feels no sense of loyalty to the citizens of the state he used to call home, who spurned Mary because of her Cherokee ancestry, he does feel a strong enough connection to his friend, Will, to risk his life as a soldier. In her husband’s long absence, Mary hires a local boy named Jamie to help with ranch work, from whom Jack learns how to handle horses, ropes and women. After the war ends, fate deals a final blow to the habitants of the Bar T Ranch–Jack learns about death and, subsequently, vengeance. After honing his gun skills with the help of a mysterious new ranch hand, Jack sets out to find the renegades who destroyed his family, eventually discovering that justice comes with both a high price and invaluable knowledge about himself and his heritage. Written in the tradition of classic western dramas, Ride for Justice satisfies readers’ need for hot-footed action, down-and-dirty romance and even offers a few moral lessons about the universal contradictions of war and the complexity of relations among races before, after and during the Civil War. The writing is easy to comprehend and enjoy, though readers might find themselves confused when time jumps ahead several paces, as during Jamie’s first foray into battle. A few scenes might also have benefited from a slower treatment–each death passes with minimal fuss and would have had a stronger effect if more attention had been allotted. But generally Harte is a competent writer with a solid grasp of what readers of westerns want.
An entertaining, well-written ride into the sunset.Pub Date: May 12, 2008
ISBN: 978-0595698509
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by John Harte
by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 31, 2018
Readers will love the quirky characters in this clever yarn. Pendergast and Coldmoon make an excellent pair.
The 18th installment in the Pendergast series by Preston and Child (City of Endless Night, 2018, etc.) gives the hero a partner in the hunt for a strange killer.
A woman walks a dog in a Miami Beach cemetery, and her dog finds a human heart. Soon more hearts turn up at the gravesites of women thought to have committed suicide a decade before. The FBI assigns agents Pendergast and Coldmoon to work with the Miami PD on the case. Pendergast is highly successful in closing cases on his own but “was about as rogue as they came,” and suspects tend not to survive his investigations. Agent Coldmoon’s secret assignment is to keep a close eye on his partner, “a bomb waiting to go off,” who tends to do something “out of left field, or of questionable ethics, or even specifically against orders.” The current victims are women whose throats have been slit and breastbones split open to remove their hearts, all in quick and expert fashion. The killer leaves notes at the graves, signed “Mister Brokenhearts.” This kind of weirdness is in Pendergast’s wheelhouse, as he’s an odd sort himself, quite outside the FBI culture. Rather like Sherlock Holmes, he sees patterns that others miss. He’s tall, gaunt, dresses like an undertaker, and always seems to have more money than the average FBI agent. Both men are great characters—Coldmoon curses in Lakota and prefers “tarry black” coffee that Pendergast likens to “poison sumac” and “battery acid.” They wonder about the earlier deaths and whether the women had really hanged themselves. For answers they require exhumations, new autopsies, and a medical examiner’s close examinations of the hyoid bones. Meanwhile the deeply troubled killer ponders his next action, which he hopes will one day wipe away his pain and guilt and bring atonement. Alligators, bullets, and a sinkhole contribute to a nerve-wracking finish.
Readers will love the quirky characters in this clever yarn. Pendergast and Coldmoon make an excellent pair.Pub Date: Dec. 31, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5387-4720-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
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edited by Margaret Atwood & Douglas Preston
by Christopher Golden ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
A thriller with an intellectual bent, Golden's latest effort ruminates on the nature and existence of good and evil while...
Far up on Turkey's Mount Ararat, buried within it like a cave, explorers discover the remains of a ship they think may be Noah's Ark. After they open an odd sarcophaguslike container and mess around with the horned cadaver inside, evil happens.
Unafraid of ascending Ararat, with its threat of storms and avalanches and altitudinal challenges, Adam Holzer and his fiancee, Meryam Karga, take on the mountain with plans of co-writing another of their exploring bestsellers and shooting a documentary. From the start, there are tensions between the couple and among their multinational, multiethnic crew. One biblical scholar, a priest, is in favor of opening the coffin and finding "the greatest connection to biblical history we have ever found." Another scholar insists that "some things are better left buried." And then there's Ben Walker from the National Science Foundation, who hopes the 5,000-year-old cadaver proves to be an actual demon to “confirm the existence of God." It's not a good sign when people start disappearing. Things get even hairier when certain expeditioners start acting like they are possessed—which, in fact, they are. When a blizzard does, indeed, trap everyone in the cave, heightening their paranoia, they struggle as much for sanity as survival. Likely inspired by the claustrophobic film thriller The Thing, Golden (Dead Ringers, 2015, etc.) tightens the screws slowly but surely. While there are times the participants succumb to a group mania reminiscent of another film, The Poseidon Adventure, the book mostly works in an eerier and subtler manner.
A thriller with an intellectual bent, Golden's latest effort ruminates on the nature and existence of good and evil while providing the chills and tingles fans of this prolific author have come to expect.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-11705-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
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