A quick-hit international adventure led by a Yank full of bravado.
In this fourth installment of Yocum’s thriller series, a former CIA operative comes out of retirement to track down a missing undercover agent in Australia.
Former CIA investigator Dennis Cunningham is enjoying early retirement in Western Australia with his girlfriend, Judy White, an Australian Federal Police investigator. One night, at a supposedly social dinner, Judy’s superior offers Dennis a job: $500,000 to find David Chu, a missing Chinese agent whom Australian intelligence had been keeping tabs on. Dennis is reluctant but decides that he can’t turn down good money, and he stipulates that Judy must be his intermediary. The investigation starts off rocky when Dennis senses Australian agents aren’t telling the whole truth, and he doesn’t like being handled.The situation darkens when he receives a threatening note and is beaten by a mysterious assailant in a parking lot after meeting with an old CIA friend. As Dennis traipses across Australia and even to the States to sniff out leads, he must temper his brashness with caution, as it turns out that finding Chu may be just the tip of an iceberg of conspiracies. Yocum’s series entry, following Valley of Spies (2019), freshens the American thriller genre with an Australian tinge. For instance, Dennis’ no-holds-barred approach satisfyingly contrasts with that of his by-the-book Australian contacts. Judy is also sharply drawn as a smart, underestimated cop, and a harrowing side plot involving her son, Trevor, shows her vulnerability. Much like Dennis, Yocum’s prose is straightforward, though some of the dialogue is awkwardly expository: “Dennis, would you stop punishing yourself about the past with your daughter? Your wife died many years ago. Let’s not open that can of worms.” Dennis’ virile-hero bit also strikes a sour note sometimes, with multiple mentions of how “attractive” he finds a colleague. Still, it’s an entertaining globe-trotter of a plot, complete with stakeouts, standoffs, and acerbic banter: “No, I did not beat the shit out of you in the parking lot,” says one of Dennis’ Aussie colleagues at one point, “But I wish the hell I had.”
A quick-hit international adventure led by a Yank full of bravado.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2022
ISBN: 979-8985534528
Page Count: 410
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Sturdy legal thrills for readers willing to go the distance with a flawed hero in an even more flawed world.
Now that he’s won two high-profile murder cases, Alabama “billboard lawyer” Jason Rich takes on his most challenging client: himself.
When methamphetamine lord Tyson Cade is gunned down outside a grocery store moments after clerk Marcia “Dooby” Darnell spurned his latest advance, you’d think the woods would be full of suspects, from Matty Dean, the distributor who immediately seizes violent control of the Sand Mountain meth operation in Cade’s absence, to the hard-used Dooby herself. But newly appointed Marshall County Sheriff Hatty Daniels and newly reelected D.A. Aloysius Holloway “Wish” French ignore all the others to concentrate on Jason, whose two earlier brushes with Cade brought him nothing but grief, who was seen nearby and caught on camera a few minutes later, and whom Cade identified as his killer with his dying breath. Insisting against all advice on defending himself, Jason accepts an inspired suggestion as his advisory counsel: Shay Lankford, the career prosecutor Wish French defeated in the last election. After rooting around endlessly in local secrets and scandals that take a heavy toll on Jason’s allies, profiler Albert Hooper comes up with enough evidence to guarantee a mistrial. But Jason doesn’t want a new trial; he wants to win the trial he’s in, and eventually he does, though not without spending a good deal of time relitigating the painful legacies of his first two murder cases. And although this case seems designed to avoid the very possibility of a surprise ending, Bailey closes by pulling a rabbit as big as a kangaroo from his hat.
Sturdy legal thrills for readers willing to go the distance with a flawed hero in an even more flawed world.Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781662516634
Page Count: 527
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
Agreeably credible lovers and a neat piece of home-restoration compensate some for the hokey hauntings on the bayou. Loyal...
A gumbo seasoned with ghosts, love, and murder on the bayou.
When 30-something Declan Fitzgerald of Boston, a successful lawyer and a member of a large and loving family, breaks off his engagement to very suitable Jessica, he knows he needs to change his life. Lawyering is not fun anymore, so, recalling Manet Hall, an old deserted plantation house he once visited with law school classmate and New Orleans native Remy, he buys the property and moves down south. Declan is also a gifted craftsman, a born decorator, and very, very rich. Soon, he meets beautiful Lena, who’s visiting her grandmother Odette, Declan’s friendly Cajun neighbor. Declan is as certain that Lena is destined to be his wife as he was that Manet Hall would become his home. But, surprise, Lena has a troubled past (like the house) and is determined to resist Declan’s courtship. While he suits Lena and works on the place, Declan experiences troubling dreams. It seems he’s actually reliving the novel’s parallel story, which took place in 1899. In that year, the maid, Abbey Manet (from whom Lena, coincidentally, is descended, and who married wealthy Lucian Manet), was raped and murdered by her brother-in-law Julian as she nursed her baby daughter. Her body was dumped into the bayou by her mother-in-law, who despised her. And grief-stricken husband Lucian, away at the time, being told that Abbey had run off, committed suicide. Now, in an unconvincing twist of gender and reincarnation, it’s Declan who hears a baby crying , experiences childbirth and rape as the reincarnation of Abbey, while Lena is Lucian. The two accept all this with equanimity, and, Manet Hall’s secrets revealed, it becomes the setting for predictable and much foreshadowed resolutions.
Agreeably credible lovers and a neat piece of home-restoration compensate some for the hokey hauntings on the bayou. Loyal fans will enjoy.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-399-14824-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2001
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