A fitting thrill ride of a conclusion to a four-book series packed with complex characters, motives, and themes that will...
In the final installment of this tetralogy, Callaghan and girlfriend Samantha are pursued through Mexico and Australia by an assortment of criminals and lawmen. Though eluding capture, they long for a normal life, so they hatch one final scheme to set things right.
Ekemar (The Quarry at the Crossroads, 2014, etc.) packs the finale of this original, complex tale with action and intrigue from stem to stern. Callaghan, thrust into a life of revenge, murder, and false identity after being mutilated by mobsters, crosses into Mexico with the Arizona police hot on his tail. While plotting his evasive maneuvers from local police, drug cartels, British and American gangsters, the FBI, Interpol, and assorted other ill-wishers, the resourceful Brit also manages to convince Samantha they are on a fun-filled, romantic holiday. As in earlier installments, Callaghan’s schemes are intricate and brilliant, as is Ekemar’s successful juggling of the sheer volume of characters, deceits, motives, and themes. Eventually, Callaghan must confess an edited version of his history to Samantha—a long recap that smacks of padding—and together they concoct a plan to redeem his identity. The series reverberates with various themes: identity, retribution, redemption. Callaghan’s situation blurs the lines between good and evil, and Ekemar expands that idea in this volume. Not only does Samantha willingly use her accounting and people skills toward Callaghan’s ends, but Yuliana, his ex, seizes the opportunity to exact her own very nasty revenge on a man who repeatedly raped her as a young girl. Exactly what constitutes justice and what humans are capable of under certain circumstances are key questions that run through the four books—gray areas that will cause some readers to celebrate the ending and others to reject it. Whatever one thinks of how things turn out, however, there is no doubt that suspense and mystery will join them to the last word.
A fitting thrill ride of a conclusion to a four-book series packed with complex characters, motives, and themes that will delight and perhaps trouble, but not disappoint, fans of this series.Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2014
ISBN: 978-1492849261
Page Count: 198
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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