Fast and fun, if slightly flawed, literary escapism.
Oehler (Aphrodesia, 2012) delivers a fusion of mainstream thriller and historical fiction, reminiscent of The Da Vinci Code.
This engaging thriller’s narrative intertwines two distinct storylines. The first thread chronicles the last days of Queen Tiye, wife of Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep III, as she prepares her secret burial chamber in her ancestral homeland of Nubia. Tiye, a devoted worshipper of the sun god Aten and an architect of “one of the greatest revolutions in history,” is not only preparing herself and her youngest son, Tutankhamen, for their deaths, but also their glorious resurrections. The second thread follows Rika Teferi, a former soldier in Eritrea’s bloody war for independence from Ethiopia now doing doctoral research as a scholar at the Cairo Museum, as she attempts to translate Tiye’s final message to Tutankhamen. A fateful accident, involving a cup of tea spilled on an invaluable papyrus by American scientist David Chamberlain, leads them both to a discovery that could change the course of history—and possibly cost them their lives. The novel is powered by intriguing scientific speculation, breathtaking locales, vivid description and references to Egyptian mythology. But while the plot is impressively knotty, the characters well-developed and the action virtually nonstop, some aspects of the story may strike readers as a bit contrived: The romantic relationship between Teferi and Chamberlain, for example, seems forced, and some twists at the end of the novel strain the boundaries of believability. That said, readers who enjoy intelligent, pedal-to-the-metal thrillers will find this archaeological escapade highly satisfying.
Fast and fun, if slightly flawed, literary escapism.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2013
ISBN: 978-1479221639
Page Count: 346
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.
Coulter’s treasured FBI agents take on two cases marked by danger and personal involvement.
Dillon Savitch and his wife, Lacey Sherlock, have special abilities that have served them well in law enforcement (Paradox, 2018, etc.). But that doesn't prevent Sherlock’s car from hitting a running man after having been struck by a speeding SUV that runs a red light. The runner, though clearly injured, continues on his way and disappears. Not so the SUV driver, a security engineer for the Bexholt Group, which has ties to government agencies. Sherlock’s own concussion causes memory loss so severe that she doesn’t recognize Savitch or remember their son, Sean. The whole incident seems more suspicious when a blood test from the splatter of the man Sherlock hit reveals that he’s Justice Cummings, an analyst for the CIA. The agency’s refusal to cooperate makes Savitch certain that Bexholt is involved in a deep-laid plot. Meanwhile, Special Agent Griffin Hammersmith is visiting friends who run a cafe in the touristy Virginia town of Gaffers Ridge. Hammersmith, who has psychic abilities, is taken aback when he hears in his mind a woman’s cry for help. Reporter Carson DeSilva, who came to the area to interview a Nobel Prize winner, also has psychic abilities, and she overhears the thoughts of Rafer Bodine, a young man who has apparently kidnapped and possibly murdered three teenage girls. Unluckily, she blurts out her thoughts, and she’s snatched and tied up in a cellar by Bodine. Bodine may be a killer, but he’s also the nephew of the sheriff and the son of the local bigwig. So the sheriff arrests Hammersmith and refuses to accept his FBI credentials. Bodine's mother has psychic powers strong enough to kill, but she meets her match in Hammersmith, DeSilva, Savitch, and Sherlock.
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.Pub Date: July 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9365-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
You'll kill this one fast and be glad you did.
When a corporate lawyer who divorced his first wife and married her more successful sister is found dead in his home in the Hamptons, his teenage son goes on trial for murder.
The fans who put Burke's (The Wife, 2018, etc.) last domestic thriller on the bestseller list are going to be happy with this one, a gimmick-free murder mystery with a two-stage surprise ending and uncommonly few credibility-straining plot elements. No double narrator! No unreliable narrator! No handsome psychopaths from central casting! And though there's usually at least one character in this type of book who isn't quite three-dimensional, most of the players here feel like they could have worked in a domestic novel without a murder, which is a kind of test for believability and page-worthiness. The star of the show is Chloe Taylor, a woman's magazine editor-in-chief who has become a hero of the #MeToo movement and a target of misogynist haters on social media. The lumpy area beneath the surface of her smooth, pretty life is the fact that she married her boozy, unstable, maternally incompetent sister's ex-husband and has been raising her nephew, Ethan, as her own son. When his father turns up dead, Ethan tells so many lies about his doings on the evening in question that despite the fact that he's obviously not a murderer, he ends up the No. 1 suspect. As soon as he's arrested, his real mom, Nicky, swoops into town and the sisters form an uneasy and shifting alliance. You'll think you have this thing all figured out, but a series of reveals at the eleventh hour upend those theories. Most of the important people in this novel are women—the head cop, the defense attorney, the judge—and their competent performances create a solid underpinning for the plot.
You'll kill this one fast and be glad you did.Pub Date: April 23, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-285337-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
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