Former CNN anchor Pilgrim’s debut novel takes readers from Turkey to California to Monaco to London and even more exotic places in dizzying, but very luxurious succession.
Cordelia Stapleton is magnificent, with dark hair and the body of an athlete. An orphan whose illustrious ancestor was a great polar explorer, “Delia” has been invited to receive an award on her ancestor’s behalf in glitzy Monaco. Delia, who doesn’t want to leave her job with an oceanographic institute even to take a short vacation, has the time coming to her, and, as her co-workers point out, it’s a great opportunity to break away from her workaholic daily life. She goes, but first stops in New York to see her lawyer and family friend, Jim, who breaks the news that her only living relative has died in London and made her a very wealthy woman. Meanwhile, in Turkey, hunky and almost sinfully handsome John Sinclair leaves his archaeological digs to make it to Monaco in order to hand out the award Delia is coming to accept. John, an international playboy, is wealthy in his own right. The two become enamored of one another faster than a Ferrari takes one of those dangerous, curvy Monte Carlo roads, and soon they’re off in pursuit of a land deed—yes, a land deed. But not just any old land deed. This one is where the vault that houses the world’s emergency supply of seeds sits, and everyone, from the Russians to the Norwegians, wants it. And, it turns out, would kill to obtain it. Pilgrim throws in little bits of science along the way, but most of the novel is weighted down with expensive brand names, luxury hotel rooms and descriptions of the lives of the very rich and pampered. If knowing the pedigree of a rug in someone’s Paris apartment is what trips a reader’s trigger, then this brand-dropping tale is just the thing to make them forget just how much gas went up at the pumps today.
Pub Date: July 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4391-9719-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011
Categories: GENERAL ROMANCE | ROMANCE
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BOOK REVIEW
An FBI agent is determined to catch a man who bilks and murders wealthy women, but the chase goes slowly.
Brown (Tailspin, 2018, etc.) has published 70 bestsellers, and this one employs her usual template of thriller spiked with romance. Its main character, Drex Easton, is an FBI agent in pursuit of a serial killer, but for him it’s personal. When he was a boy, his mother left him and his father for another man, Weston Graham. Drex believes Graham murdered her and that he has killed at least seven more women after emptying their bank accounts. Now he thinks he has the clever Graham—current alias Jasper Ford—in his sights, and he’s willing to put his career at risk to catch him. The women Ford targets are wealthy, and his new prey is no exception—except that, uncharacteristically, he has married her. Talia Ford proves to be a complication for Drex, who instantly falls in lust with her even though he’s not at all sure she isn’t her husband's accomplice. Posing as a would-be novelist, Drex moves into an apartment next door to the Fords’ posh home and tries to ingratiate himself, but tensions rise immediately—Jasper is suspicious, and Talia has mixed feelings about Drex's flirtatious behavior. When Talia’s fun-loving friend Elaine Conner turns up dead after a cruise on her yacht and Jasper disappears, Drex and Talia become allies. There are a few action sequences and fewer sex scenes, but the novel’s pace bogs down repeatedly in long, mundane conversations. Drex's two FBI agent sidekicks are more interesting characters than he is; Drex himself is such a caricature of a macho man, so heedless of ethics, and so aggressive toward women that it’s tough to see him as a good guy. Brown adds a couple of implausible twists at the very end that make him seem almost as untrustworthy as Graham.
This thriller about the pursuit of a serial killer suffers from an unpleasant hero and a glacial pace.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4555-7219-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
Categories: GENERAL ROMANCE | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | ROMANCE | SUSPENSE | THRILLER | SUSPENSE | CRIME & LEGAL THRILLER
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A trifle facile, but this decades-spanning drama is readable and engrossing throughout.
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Two refugees from the Spanish Civil War cross the Atlantic Ocean to Chile and a half-century of political and personal upheavals.
We meet Victor Dalmau and Roser Bruguera in 1938 as it is becoming increasingly clear that the Republican cause they support is doomed. When they reunite in France as penniless refugees, Roser has survived a harrowing flight across the Pyrenees while heavily pregnant and given birth to the son of Victor’s brother Guillem, killed at the Battle of the Ebro. Victor, evacuated with the wounded he was tending in a makeshift hospital, learns of a ship outfitted by poet Pablo Neruda to take exiles to a new life in Chile, but he and Roser must marry in order to gain a berth. Allende (In the Midst of Winter, 2017, etc.) expertly sets up this forced intimacy between two very different people: Resolute, realistic Roser never looks back and doggedly pursues a musical career in Chile while Victor, despite being fast-tracked into medical school by socialist politician Salvador Allende (a relative of the author's), remains melancholy and nostalgic for his homeland. Their platonic affection deepens into physical love and lasting commitment in an episodic narrative that reaches a catastrophic climax with the 1973 coup overthrowing Chile’s democratically elected government. For Victor and Roser, this is a painful reminder of their losses in Spain and the start of new suffering. The wealthy, conservative del Solar family provides a counterpoint to the idealistic Dalmaus; snobbish, right-wing patriarch Isidro and his hysterically religious wife, Laura, verge on caricature, but Allende paints more nuanced portraits of eldest son Felipe, who smooths the refugees’ early days in Chile, and daughter Ofelia, whose brief affair with Victor has lasting consequences. Allende tends to describe emotions and events rather than delve into them, and she paints the historical backdrop in very broad strokes, but she is an engaging storyteller. A touching close in 1994 brings one more surprise and unexpected hope for the future to 80-year-old Victor.
A trifle facile, but this decades-spanning drama is readable and engrossing throughout.Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2015-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
Categories: LITERARY FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION | ROMANCE | HISTORICAL ROMANCE
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