The great subject that's fascinated le Carre (The Night Manager, 1993, etc.) throughout his career — what happens to the masters of tradecraft in a world that doesn't match their trade — comes in for unsettlingly timely treatment in this latest tale of spies grown too old and knowing. Back in the sorely missed old world order, Larry Pettifer was a British double agent inside the KGB who shuttled back and forth between his two sets of masters with nary a care. Now, just as he's about to start the job his old school-friend Timothy Cranmer has found him at the University of Bath, he's gone missing, together with Cranmer's decorative lover Emma Manzini. A pair of hectoring police officers, who inevitably turn out to be Special Branch, are convinced that Cranmer knows what happened to his old colleague, and Cranmer is doubly frantic: first to hide any links between his mistress and her current lover, then to hide the fact that he may have killed Pettifer himself at their last momentous meeting. May have? It's typical of Cranmer, the good Englishman who's as dispassionate a professional as George Smiley, that he can't be sure whether or not he really killed his opposite number, a Byronic moralist full of passionate convictions about every battle he's ever fought. The news that Pettifer's old KGB controller Konstantin Checheyev has disappeared at the same time with a self-administered $37 million retirement fund allows Cranmer to identify Pettifer's latest cause — the uprising in Checheyev's native Chechen republic — but doesn't tell him what to do about it: He can only call on the tricks of his tradecraft one last time in a sad, mad chase over Europe and Russia to find Pettifer, without any idea what he can say if he's lucky enough to find him still alive. The debate between noncommittal Cranmer and heroically partisan Pettifer, which is at the heart of the novel, is never satisfyingly dramatized — lots of peevish flashbacks have to do the job of pricking Cranmer's conscience — but le Carre has never written more subtly or tellingly of the fate of agents doomed by their own success.
Pub Date: March 10, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-44189-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995
Lots of frenzied flipping back and forth for readers who like to figure out the puzzle.
Witnessing a suicide proves almost fatal for the witness herself.
Shay Miller would not have been on that subway platform had she not taken the 22 seconds required to tie up her ponytail. Because she did, she is the sole witness to a suicide that changes her life. But is she stalking the friends of the dead girl, or are they stalking her? It seems to be both, as Hendricks and Pekkanen (An Anonymous Girl, 2019) unfold another one of their intricately plotted, female-focused thrillers. Rage about rape and sexual abuse underlies the plot as Google searches, dating apps, and hacked phones move it forward, making this a thriller of the moment. Here, the evil men are on the sidelines—the women are pitted against each other in a complicated game of cat and mouse. Shay, who is lonely, insecure, and broke, is easily drawn in by the cool and confident Moore sisters, who ply her with beauty makeovers, a “sea-blue leather purse,” “a sugar cookie scented Nest candle, with notes of Tahitian vanilla and bourbon infused caramel,” and, most devastatingly, the illusion of friendship. But socially awkward, highly observant Shay, who makes her way through life by recording statistics and factoids about human nature in a “Data Book,” can only be fooled so long. “Between 73 and 79 percent of homicides during a 15-year period were committed by offenders known to the victim,” she notes. Good thing to know. The authors dole out clues in a series of interlocking flashbacks; finally we get the detail that makes the pieces come together, with just a few little issues to argue about in your book club.
Lots of frenzied flipping back and forth for readers who like to figure out the puzzle.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-20203-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
A fast-paced, twisty-turny mystery perfect for a cozy weekend read.
When a mysterious hacker exposes sensitive emails at Aldrich University, everyone’s secrets are laid bare to public scrutiny. But no one saw surgeon Greg Strasser’s murder coming.
The data breach reveals Blue Hill, Pennsylvania, to be a veritable Peyton Place of disgrace, including extramarital affairs, testing scandals, and fraternity rape accusations. Hidden in Greg’s trash folder are emails to a “Lolita Bovary” that cast him as certainly a philanderer and quite possibly a pedophile. After the Aldrich Giving Gala, Greg’s wife, Kit, awakens from a drunken stupor to discover him stabbed in the kitchen. Could she have killed him out of rage? Or perhaps it was Kit’s ambitious co-worker Lynn, eager to push Kit off the corporate ladder by framing her for murder? Then again, where was Lynn’s husband that night? And who is Lolita? Kit’s daughter, Sienna, is certainly sad about her stepfather’s death, but her friend Raina’s grief seems suspiciously excessive. Meanwhile, Kit’s sister, Willa, is back in town. An investigative reporter with secrets in her own past, Willa is loath to stay a minute past the funeral reception, but how can she refuse to help Kit stay out of jail? With nods to Big Little Lies as well as her own Pretty Little Liars series, Shepard (The Elizas, 2018, etc.) brilliantly hides the identity of the true villain in the gaps between characters. An Agatha Christie for the 21st century, Shepard masterfully crafts a prestigious town rife with hidden temptation and sin. So Willa gets her chance to play Miss Marple, albeit a much younger, hipper version, and her sleuthing deftly exposes unexpected links between characters. From chapter to chapter, Shepard’s plotting breathlessly careens between characters, with each cliffhanger swiftly answered by another, ratcheting up the stakes until the killer is finally unmasked.
A fast-paced, twisty-turny mystery perfect for a cozy weekend read.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4290-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
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