Despite Lina’s considerable charm, her fifth appearance is just too murky to afford much satisfaction.
An antiques-restoration prodigy fears the worst when a prospective customer won’t take no for an answer.
It isn’t as if young Lina Townend (Guilty Pleasures, 2011, etc.) doesn’t have her hands full already. Her studio is full of Toby jugs with broken handles and porcelain shepherdesses crying to have their arms reattached. Her mentor, Griff Tripp, has been recruited by a local theater troupe for a production that requires endless hours of rehearsal in a refurbished barley kiln in a Godforsaken industrial park. Her detective boyfriend, Morris, is on assignment in Lyon. And her feckless Pa, a model of down-on-his-luck British royalty, is probably peddling dodgy antiques through a sketchy dealer named Titus Oates. Still, when suave, vaguely French Charles Montaigne offers her “good times all the time—a properly managed work flow, regular hours, paid holidays,” Lina counters with a quick “No thanks.” At which point things promptly go pear-shaped. A series of cruel pranks—a slashed tire, dead fish in the vents—threatens the actors. Griff develops chest pains that require a barrage of National Health–funded tests. A man with lovely eyes seems to be following Lina around the industrial park. Worst of all, her privacy is invaded: She receives a string of bogus postcards, purportedly from Morris, revealing intimate knowledge of her movements. All the while, Charles Montaigne continues to importune, prompting Lina, with Griff in tow, to make a mad dash across the Channel toward what she hopes will be safety.
Despite Lina’s considerable charm, her fifth appearance is just too murky to afford much satisfaction.Pub Date: June 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7278-8142-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
Furiously suspenseful, but brain-dead second volume in Child’s gratuitously derivative Jack Reacher action series (Killing Floor, 1997). Reacher, a former Army Military Police Major, has now moved on to Chicago, where he gallantly assists a beautiful mystery woman hobbling on a crutch with her dry cleaning. Seconds later, Reacher and the woman, FBI agent Holly Johnson (also daughter of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as goddaughter of the President), are kidnaped by armed gunmen. Handcuffed together and tossed in the back of a van, the two are taken to the Montana mountain stronghold of Beau Borken, a fat, ugly, psychopathically vicious neo-Nazi militia leader given to sawing the arms off day laborers and making windy speeches about how he brilliant he is. Of course, the kidnappers don’t know that they have a former military police major in their clutches who, in addition to having a Silver Star for heroism, is one of the best snipers the Army has ever produced, can pull iron rings out of barn doors, and kill bad guys with lit cigarettes. Meanwhile, a team of FBI agents, at least one of whom is a mole leaking information to Borken, identify Reacher from a reconstructed photo taken from the dry cleaner’s surveillance camera. Borken, impressed with Reacher’s military record, lectures him about his brilliant plan to overthrow the US using a hijacked Army missile unit, with Holly held as a hostage in a specially constructed, dynamite-lined prison cell. Borken stupidly lets Reacher best him in a shooting match, then grandiosely turns his back on his captives enough times for Reacher and Holly to escape, cause havoc, get captured, escape, make love in the woods, cause more havoc, and get captured again, as General Johnson, FBI Director Harlan Webster, and General Garber, Reacher’s former commander, plan a covert strike on Borken’s fortress that’s certain to fail. Another Rogue Warrior meets Die Hard with all the typical over-the-top plotting, blood-splattering ultraviolence, lock-jawed heroics and the dumbest villains this side of Ruby Ridge.
Pub Date: July 20, 1998
ISBN: 0-399-14379-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1998
More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe’s adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that...
Wyoming Game and Fish Warden Joe Pickett (Free Fire, 2007, etc.), once again at the governor’s behest, stalks the wraithlike figure who’s targeting elk hunters for death.
Frank Urman was taken down by a single rifle shot, field-dressed, beheaded and hung upside-down to bleed out. (You won’t believe where his head eventually turns up.) The poker chip found near his body confirms that he’s the third victim of the Wolverine, a killer whose animus against hunters is evidently being whipped up by anti-hunting activist Klamath Moore. The potential effects on the state’s hunting revenues are so calamitous that Governor Spencer Rulon pulls out all the stops, and Pickett is forced to work directly with Wyoming Game and Fish Director Randy Pope, the boss who fired him from his regular job in Saddlestring District. Three more victims will die in rapid succession before Joe is given a more congenial colleague: Nate Romanowski, the outlaw falconer who pledged to protect Joe’s family before he was taken into federal custody. As usual in this acclaimed series, the mystery is slight and its solution eminently guessable long before it’s confirmed by testimony from an unlikely source. But the people and scenes and enduring conflicts that lead up to that solution will stick with you for a long time.
More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe’s adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that periodically release the tension between the scheming adversaries.Pub Date: May 20, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-399-15488-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2008
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