Follett, whose thrillers have been impressively tough-minded, goes all soft now—with a pre-WW I suspense-romance that recycles the Eye of the Needle premise (woman adores assassin) but surrounds it with the soupy conventions of corny family-saga fiction. In 1914, elegant Lydia is the prim, devoted wife of conservative diplomat Lord Walden and the protective mother of 18-year-old Charlotte. But 19 years ago, back in her native Russia, well-born Lydia was the lustfully liberated lover of a young anarchist named Feliks. (She married Walden, in fact, to save Feliks' life when he was arrested.) So now, when Lord Walden is about to begin delicate, war-minded negotiations with Russia's Prince Orlov (Lydia's cousin), guess who's on his way to England to assassinate Orlov? Feliks, of course—whose first murder attempt (hijacking Walden's carriage) fails when he catches sight of old-flame Lydia and momentarily loses his nerve. And—though Feliks then seeks out Lydia, rekindles her flame, and tricks her into telling him where Orlov is hiding out—the second attempt also fails; moreover, despite her passion, Lydia won't knowingly help Feliks to kill Orlov (who's in hiding again). So Feliks now starts following Lydia's naive daughter Charlotte—who, as it happens, has just begun rebelling against her quasi-Victorian upbringing. (There's the usual suffragette sequence—handled less well here than in dozens of other historical novels.) And, implausibly, Charlotte quickly becomes Feliks' unwitting accomplice, while Feliks—suddenly humanized—stews guiltily, because. . . Charlotte is his daughter! The finale, then: Feliks goes after Orlov, who's at the Walden country estate; Lydia figures out Feliks' plan but can't warn her husband without revealing the secret of Charlotte's paternity; Charlotte learns who Feliks really is; and, after killing Orlov, Feliks sacrifices his life to save Charlotte's. Unfortunately, this operatic, sentimental-melodrama setup is full of holes—from the coincidence-heavy plotting to the unconvincing characterizations to the dubious history. (You never believe that Orlov's death will really prevent World War I.) And the narration is uncharacteristically slack—heavy on flashbacks and droopily emotional internal-monologues. Still, though this is Follett's weakest book by far, the big-name byline and the overall readability (plus a jolt or two of graphic sex) should ensure a sizeable readership—with historical-romantics more likely to be pleased than Follett's usual thriller fans.
Pub Date: May 14, 1982
ISBN: 0451208706
Page Count: 324
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1982
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Irritatingly trite woman-in-periler from lawyer-turned-novelist Baldacci. Moving away from the White House and the white-shoe Washington law firms of his previous bestsellers (Absolute Power, 1996; Total Control, 1997), Baldacci comes up with LuAnn Tyler, a spunky, impossibly beautiful, white-trash truck stop waitress with a no-good husband and a terminally cute infant daughter in tow. Some months after the birth of Lisa, LuAnn gets a phone call summoning her to a make-shift office in an unrented storefront of the local shopping mall. There, she gets a Faustian offer from a Mr. Jackson, a monomaniacal, cross-dressing manipulator who apparently knows the winning numbers in the national lottery before the numbers are drawn. It seems that LuAnn fits the media profile of what a lottery winner should be—poor, undereducated but proud—and if she's willing to buy the right ticket at the right time and transfer most of her winnings to Jackson, she'll be able to retire in luxury. Jackson fails to inform her, however, that if she refuses his offer, he'll have her killed. Before that can happen, as luck would have it, LuAnn barely escapes death when one of husband Duane's drug deals goes bad. She hops on a first-class Amtrak sleeper to Manhattan with a hired executioner in pursuit. But executioner Charlie, one of Jackson's paid handlers, can't help but hear wedding bells when he sees LuAnn cooing with her daughter. Alas, a winning $100- million lottery drawing complicates things. Jackson spirits LuAnn and Lisa away to Sweden, with Charlie in pursuit. Never fear. Not only will LuAnn escape a series of increasingly violent predicaments, but she'll also outwit Jackson, pay an enormous tax bill to the IRS, and have enough left over to honeymoon in Switzerland. Too preposterous to work as feminine wish-fulfillment, too formulaic to be suspenseful. (Book-of-the-Month Club main selection)
Pub Date: Dec. 2, 1997
ISBN: 0-446-52259-7
Page Count: 528
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1997
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