Joe McGuire returns to the Boston PD from a leave of absence, is matched up as partner with his ex-lover's new boyfriend, and is sent off to Palm Springs to escort a murderer home. Except that the case doesn't make sense: every time McGuire's ex-partner, the paralyzed Ollie, feeds the names into his super computer, he's refused access—national security. In Palm Springs, the murderer is then murdered; McGuire's partner is seriously wounded; and someone is whispering weird messages to him in his motel room. Plus: a gorgeous, stupendously wealthy widow seduces McGuire, sort of, while the feds tail him, snipe at him, and abduct him to a secret Nevada nuclear-testing ground, where they try to get him off their case. Meanwhile, the mysterious widow departs, the loony whisperer inveigles McGuire to his hideaway, and a nuclear bomb that nobody wants to admit was stolen is detonated. Eventually, McGuire patches together the whole story of who stole it—but not in time: the last coverup is in place, which means McGuire is on the run, maybe forever, because he Knows Too Much. The plot takes too long to unwind, the characters are cookie- cutter clichÇ, and Canadian award-winner Reynolds (The Man Who Murdered God, And Leave Her Lay Dying) disappoints.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-670-83669-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Even readers who don’t care for the endless bureaucratic infighting will have to admire this tour de force, in which...
The abduction of one of their own rouses the members of MI5’s dead-end Slough House (Dead Lions, 2013, etc.) to action once more.
As she’s the first to tell everyone, recovering alcoholic Catherine Standish has never been “a joe,” a field agent. She’s just the assistant to Jackson Lamb, who lords it over Slough House as if it weren’t the penultimate stop on the path from success in the Security Service to disgrace and oblivion. But that doesn’t stop her ex-lover Sean Donovan from scooping her up in a van, locking her in a room an hour outside London, and demanding in exchange for her return a copy of a most sensitive intelligence file. Naturally, River Cartwright, the colleague Catherine designates as the one she’d be most likely to trust with her life, makes a hash of his attempt to meet the ransom demand and ends up in a little room of his own being worked over by Nick Duffy of the Dogs, the service’s internal police. That’s no slur against him, though, because the savviest agent in the world (something River’s never come close to being on his best day) would never have suspected the truth about the rabbit hole Catherine’s tumbled down. Her kidnapping, it’s gradually revealed, is both more and less than it seems—less, because her abductors couldn’t be more considerate, except for the one who quickly gets killed; more, because the service itself is so torn between narcissistic careerists and warring factions battling for control that its fate, and presumably that of her majesty’s government, seems to hang in the balance.
Even readers who don’t care for the endless bureaucratic infighting will have to admire this tour de force, in which virtually every single player—good guys, bad guys, all the turncoats and in-betweeners—is somehow connected to British Intelligence.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-61695-612-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Soho Crime
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
PROFILES
The astute and unconventional Edwardian pair seem to have entered the pages of a gothic novel for an exhilarating new tale...
An intrepid lepidopterist and her sometime lover are caught up in yet another extravagant adventure in 1888.
Returning to London from Madeira, Veronica Speedwell gets the cold shoulder from her companion in mystery solving, Stoker Templeton-Vane (A Treacherous Curse, 2018, etc.), who’s still furious that he was left out of the unexplained trip. He’s not happy, either, that his elder brother, Tiberius, Lord Templeton-Vane, wants Veronica to accompany him to St. Maddern's Isle off the coast of Cornwall to visit the castle of his old friend Malcolm Romilly, who’s promised to give Veronica some larvae of the Romilly Glasswing butterfly, thought to be extinct. What Tiberius doesn't tell Veronica—yet—is that she'll have to pose as his fiancee to gain the approval of their Catholic host, who wouldn't approve of an unchaperoned single woman. Upon their arrival in Cornwall, they find Stoker, refusing to be left out, waiting to join a group that includes Malcolm; his sister, Mertensia, a tireless gardener; his sister-in-law, Helen; her son, Caspian; and a crew of servants directed by longtime family retainer Mrs. Trengrouse. The island is large enough for farms and a village whose superstitious natives tell tales of piskies and mermaids. Stoker and his brother constantly snipe over Veronica, whom Tiberius works to seduce and Stoker secretly wants to marry. Although she loves Stoker, Veronica fears he’s never gotten over the dreadful marriage that almost killed him and is so independent herself that she’s afraid to commit to more than a physical relationship. Meanwhile, Malcolm’s wife, Rosamund, vanished on their wedding day three years ago, and no one knows whether she’s dead or alive. When Malcolm’s discovery of Rosamund’s traveling bag makes it all but certain that she’s dead, he asks for Veronica and Stoker's help in finding out what happened to her. Slowly, secrets from the past are revealed, and the sleuths find themselves threatened by someone desperate to keep those secrets buried forever.
The astute and unconventional Edwardian pair seem to have entered the pages of a gothic novel for an exhilarating new tale full of wild adventures and treacherous relationships.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-451-49071-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
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