Sprightly characters propel this tense story of dark secrets and duplicity.
The hunt for stolen Nazi treasure quickly turns deadly in Beck’s debut historical thriller.
Frank Reid is sad to lose his best friend and billionaire business partner Henry Weddell. Suspecting foul play, Frank enlists a security team in California to protect his own family as well as Henry’s, who may be targeted by diabolical types pursuing a fortune in Nazi-pilfered gold and cash. It seems that back in 1944, two American soldiers were captured by an SS officer, who made a deal with them: They’d get to live (“You’ve managed to avoid a firing squad”), and would even be comfortably rich, if they helped with a valuable haul. In 2008 Alaska, former CIA operative Jim Bennett keeps a close eye on three dubious individuals in his village: a wealthy oil producer, a recently-hired cop with a questionable past, and a nosy self-proclaimed writer. These potentially-linked men, along with Nazi artifacts that a local man unearthed decades ago, may all have ties to the search for the World War II–era loot. As the story progresses, Beck effortlessly adds characters to the perpetually growing cast; they include pilot Dale Olsen, Jim’s personable, 20-something kids Danny and Audra, and several highly-skilled members of security team Dark Star. There’s ample mystery at the beginning, as it’s unclear how the dual time eras, the action in two U.S. states, and the bevy of individuals will possibly connect. However, readers will be mostly caught up before the halfway point and way ahead of the characters piecing together what they’ve learned and concocting theories. There are still plentiful surprises and suspense as people double-cross one another or suddenly die (and trusting an SS general isn’t easy, even when he claims to despise Hitler). Facing off against greedy villains precipitates some entertaining action, and more than one pair among the cast may find a romance more rewarding than whatever the Nazis stole.
Sprightly characters propel this tense story of dark secrets and duplicity.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781886591363
Page Count: 418
Publisher: Blue Creek Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 6, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Although it lacks the surgical precision of Slaughter’s very best nightmares, this one richly earns its title.
More than a decade after a Georgia man is convicted of a monstrous double murder, an uncomfortably similar crime frees him and resets the search for the guilty party.
In Clifton County, home to the Rich Cliftons and the other Cliftons, the disappearance of teens Madison Dalrymple and Cheyenne Baker during the Halloween festivities hits everyone in North Falls hard. Working with her father, Sheriff Gerald Clifton, Deputy Emmy Lou Clifton hears the clock ticking down as she races frantically to get leads on the two friends, who’d been secretly plotting to take off for Atlanta after some undisclosed big score. As a longtime friend of Madison’s mother, Hannah, Emmy hopes against hope to find the missing teens before they’re both dead. By the time Emmy’s hopes are dashed, two unpleasantly likely suspects with strong attachments to underage sex partners have emerged, and one of them ends up in prison. In a bold move, Slaughter jumps over the next 12 years to the case of Paisley Walker, a 14-year-old whose disappearance catches the eye of retiring FBI criminal psychologist Jude Archer, who promptly crosses the country to come to Clifton County and take charge—um, that is, consult—on this heartrending new investigation. Emmy, suddenly and shockingly deprived of counsel from the parents who’ve supported her all her life, doesn’t get along any better with Jude than with the larger circle of Cliftons and the Clifton-Cliftons. But together they identify one new suspect, then another, before a shootout that arrives so early you just know there are still more surprises to come.
Although it lacks the surgical precision of Slaughter’s very best nightmares, this one richly earns its title.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2025
ISBN: 9780063336773
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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