A bloody, escapist thriller following a man with nothing to lose.
In D’Aquisto’s thriller, a retired cop goes head-to-head with brutal gangs in rural Sri Lanka.
Three years after retiring from the Seattle Police Department, detective-turned-private-investigator John Sandes finds himself on an extended vacation in Sri Lanka, where he spends the days swimming in the warm sea and sampling the local cuisine at beachside restaurants. On a drive between resort areas, he stops for lunch in what appears to be a sleepy town—one so small it’s not marked on his map—only to witness two men attack a woman with acid. After the police refuse to do anything about the incident (other than advise Sandes to leave the area), he learns that the town is hostage to two outlaw factions: a group of Australian drug smugglers and the Sri Lankan mob. Never one to let an injustice go unaddressed, Sandes finds and kills one of the woman’s attackers—a Sri Lankan mobster—earning him the respect of the Australians. He temporarily enters the protection of the Aussies, thus upsetting the town’s fragile truce. Disgusted by the murderous behavior of both groups, Sandes finds himself caught, perhaps fatally, between a rock and a hard place. If he wants to ever make it out of Sri Lanka alive, he’s going to have to shoot his way out. The point of view alternates between that of John and several supporting characters, but D’Aquisto’s no-frills prose is a constant: “As soon as I heard the bang, I bolted away,” narrates Sandes during a typical fracas. “I didn’t want to lose any time. I heard tons of gunshots. I knew there was a chance someone would shoot me in the back as I ran, but my hope was that the two gangs would be too busy shooting at each other to notice me.” Despite Sandes’s profession, the narrative does not involve much detecting, and the plot serves primarily to shuttle John between shootouts. With its tropical Sri Lankan setting, this will be a satisfying beach read for fans of 1980s action movies.
A bloody, escapist thriller following a man with nothing to lose.Pub Date: June 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781069287816
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Everything you’d expect from Grisham, and this time something more.
After more than three decades of producing bestselling legal thrillers, Grisham tries his hand at a whodunit.
Eleanor Barnett wants Simon Latch to write her a will. That’s pretty much his job description, since practicing law in Braxton, Virginia, for 18 years hasn’t given him much opportunity to spread his wings. But the case of Netty, as she insists he call her, is different. She’s an 85-year-old widow whose second husband, Harry Korsak, left her with something like $20 million in cash and securities. She has a pair of stepsons, Clyde and Jerry Korsak, she’s determined to disinherit. And she already has a will, a document Wally Thackerman drafted a few weeks ago that basically allowed him, as Simon soon discovers, to pillage her estate. So instead of following his usual procedure and asking his longtime secretary, Matilda Clark, to type out the will, Simon types it himself and has it witnessed without saying anything to her. Of course he’d never do what Wally Thackerman did, but given his poverty, his gambling addiction, and his estrangement from his wife, Paula, whose income is a lot more stable than his own, he wouldn’t mind drawing just a bit on Netty’s wealth. As it happens, his new client turns out to be more trouble than she’s worth, maybe even more trouble than she would’ve been worth to Wally. And when she ends up dying, her death is swiftly identified as murder, with every indication that Simon killed her himself. The whodunit is unremarkable, but Grisham handles the legal complexities of the case with professional finesse and adds a wonderfully poignant portrait of a nothingburger lawyer trying his best to keep things more or less legal.
Everything you’d expect from Grisham, and this time something more.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9780385548984
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A standout in the series.
The sixth adventure of Harvard symbology professor Robert Langdon explores the mysteries of human consciousness, the demonic projects of the CIA, and the city of Prague.
“Ladies and gentlemen...we are about to experience a sea change in our understanding of how the brain works, the nature of consciousness, and in fact…the very nature of reality itself.” But first—Langdon’s in love! Brown’s devoted readers first met brilliant noetic scientist Katherine Solomon in The Lost Symbol (2009); she’s back as a serious girlfriend, engaging the committed bachelor in a way not seen before. The book opens with the pair in a luxurious suite at the Four Seasons in Prague. It’s the night after Katherine has delivered the lecture quoted above, setting the theme for the novel, which features a plethora of real-life cases and anomalies that seem to support the notion that human consciousness is not localized inside the human skull. Brown’s talent for assembling research is also evident in this novel’s alter ego as a guidebook to Prague, whose history and attractions are described in great and glowing detail. Whether you appreciate or skim past the innumerable info dumps on these and other topics (Jewish folklore fans—the Golem is in the house!), it goes without saying that concision is not a goal in the Dan Brown editing process. Speaking of editing, the nearly 700-page book is dedicated to Brown’s editor, who seems to appear as a character—to put it in the italicized form used for Brownian insight, Jason Kaufman must be Jonas Faukman! A major subplot involves the theft of Katherine’s manuscript from the secure servers of Penguin Random House; the delightful Faukman continues to spout witty wisecracks even when blindfolded and hogtied. There’s no shortage of action, derring-do, explosions, high-tech torture machines, attempted and successful murders, and opportunities for split-second, last-minute escapes; good thing Langdon, this aging symbology wonk, never misses swimming his morning laps. Readers who are not already dyed-in-the-wool Langdonites may find themselves echoing the prof’s own conclusion regarding the credibility of all this paranormal hoo-ha: At some point, skepticism itself becomes irrational.
A standout in the series.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9780385546898
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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