A sharp and expertly done espionage thriller fueled by the past lives of the main characters.
Visions of the past intermingle with contemporary threats in this international thriller, one in a series.
This entry in O’Connor’s series (following The Key to Kells in 2022 and Threshold in 2023) finds the heroic central couple, Key and Arin Murphy, relaxing in Ocho Rios, Jamaica, in the wake of the events of the previous novel—events that have left Arin with a wound that needs healing and both of them with a number of shadowy enemies. As the story opens, the two are accosted by a thug (“I was asked to deliver a message”) while they’re enjoying time on the beach, and the danger facing them only grows greater from this point on as the narrative broadens its scope. The author takes readers through his customary variety of picturesque foreign locations (including Jamaica and Chile) and doles out bits of contemporary headlines to ground readers thoroughly in the present-day setting of the book; there’s increased Chinese saber-rattling about the independence of Taiwan and, more pointedly, the West is still reeling from Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine. Against this backdrop of international tension, a plot involving Key and Arin unfolds in which Arin experiences vivid flashes of images that seem to be coming to her from the distant past. As these increase in number and detail, Key and Arin realize that she’s having visions of an ancestor of hers, a Black man who seems to have fought alongside Chilean forces against the Spanish in Chile’s War of Independence 200 years prior. The deeper Key and Arin go into the mystery of this ancestor’s identity, the more the clandestine forces opposing them step up their attacks.
The cat-and-mouse machinations of the heroes and their nefarious opponents take the story into a wide variety of not only far-flung locales but also distant time periods, all brought to vivid life by O’Connor in these pages. The author’s descriptions of the settings were a reliable strength of the previous volumes and continue to be highlights here. This makes for seductive reading, which is fortunate, because O’Connor’s attempts to ground readers in the arcana of the history of his characters fall a bit short for those who’ve missed the first two installments in this saga of high adventure and high-strung emotions—the author fails to take any of the myriad natural opportunities early in the story to catch readers up on what they’ve missed (or forgotten). Still, this flaw is very much mitigated by all of the things O’Connor does right: His exotic locations are rendered with color and fidelity, his characters dramatically seize every moment they’re given, and, most importantly, the book’s pacing and dialogue make it a genuine page-turner. (The way O’Connor fleshes out the main plot about dangerously escalating tensions between China and Taiwan is particularly compelling.) The novel’s single strongest narrative point—Key learning things about his past in richly rendered flashbacks to other lives—has by this point been honed by the author into a signature dramatic device; it makes this third entry in the saga of Key and Arin compulsively readable.
A sharp and expertly done espionage thriller fueled by the past lives of the main characters.Pub Date: April 25, 2025
ISBN: 9798986713168
Page Count: 415
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Maybe not the most thrilling thriller, but the role of AI in coping with grief gives this novel pathos and interest.
A widowed and disgraced plastic surgeon is drawn into a Russian oligarch’s evil schemes.
Witherspoon’s adult fiction debut, co-authored with thrillermeister Coben, opens as heart surgery performed by Dr. Marc Adams in a North African refugee camp is interrupted by the explosive invasion of armed militants. It's the last we will see of Marc in this dimension. The next chapter jumps ahead one year to a ceremony at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore where his widow, Maggie McCabe, is supposed to be presenting an award in honor of her mother. Miserable and anxious about appearing in public after having lost her medical license, she consults with her late husband on her phone—not via supernatural means, but using a "griefbot," an amazingly lifelike and functional AI app created by her genius sister, Sharon. Once the griefbot coaxes her to brave the sneering masses, she learns she’s been replaced on the podium anyway. But she runs into a former professor, a celebrity plastic surgeon, who requests a meeting with her at his office in New York and won’t take no for an answer. Next thing she knows, there’s $10 million in her bank account and she’s on a private plane heading to a palace outside Moscow where she’s been engaged to perform off-the-record surgery on billionaire Oleg Ragoravich (new face) and his girlfriend, Nadia (new boobs). And…we’re off. A whirl of surgeries, chases, and escapes ensues as Maggie gradually comes to understand who these people are and what they have in mind for her, and how it connects to Marc and their missing friend and business partner, Trace Packer. She is aided by her delightful father-in-law, Porkchop, owner of a biker bar in New York City and a very handy guy to have on your team if you've run afoul of an international criminal organization. From the palace in Rublevka the action moves to Dubai and then Bordeaux, climaxing in a high-stakes illegal heart transplant. But wait—is Marc really dead? What happened to Trace? Who is Nadia really? Though these smoldering questions don’t quite catch fire, it's a good first try for Witherspoon.
Maybe not the most thrilling thriller, but the role of AI in coping with grief gives this novel pathos and interest.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781538774700
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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