An offbeat espionage thriller that’s hampered by sometimes-tedious prose.
Indian holy orders and modern-day spies collide in Ramamurthy’s thriller.
Kapardi is a 27-year-old orphan who’s spent most of his life in the Vatapi Ganapati Ashram in India, where followers are mourning the loss of their guru, poisoned by the same gangs they see as taking over India and their environment. Their movement calls for peace as they try to convince the public to take better care of the Earth, but Kapardi believes that this path may no longer have any effect. In Karachi, Hamid Mir is a retired operative of Pakistan’s most secretive intelligence unit, the Joint Intelligence Miscellaneous; he’s recently been called in and tasked with a new mission that he must carry out in total secrecy—one that will weaken India permanently. He sets to work creating shell companies and hiring European geologists, tasking them with finding the fabled Kedareswara Temple, which may hold the key to his plan. In Rishikesh, members of an ancient, tree-worshipping order have restarted a mission with a secret purpose, also tied to the Kedareswara Temple, pitting them against Hamid. Meanwhile, Shazia, a young agent of the Indian Central Bureau of Investigation, has a deep love for geology and a desire to prove herself in the Bureau; before long, she, too, will be drawn into the web of competing factions with conflicting visions of the future. Ramamurthy offers up some wonderful images, such as ghostly pilgrims on the dimly lit Ganges river, to convey his story’s underlying ancient mysticism. His central conceit of pitting ethereal, nature-loving holy men against government agents and crooked politicians offers a fresh take on the spy genre, and its outlandish climax features gurus, laser beams, and swordfights. However, from the start, the book buries readers in confusing and often unengaging backstories. Lengthy lists of characters’ attributes, various religious movements, histories of mafia families, and geological anomalies slow the pace. It becomes a laborious task of sifting through pages of superfluous information, rather than a fun, thought-provoking adventure.
An offbeat espionage thriller that’s hampered by sometimes-tedious prose.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2024
ISBN: 9789359117409
Page Count: 482
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Feb. 11, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.
What hasn’t legendary legal eagle Grisham tried yet? How about a thriller about serial kidnapping and international terrorism.
When Paul and Chelsea Tanner disappear during a day trip on their Paris honeymoon, their abductors demand a ransom of $2 million from Chelsea’s wealthy parents, and a few days later the same sum from Paul’s much less well-heeled parents. After orthopedist Lowell Clayburn, Chelsea’s father, ponies up the ransom without breathing a word to the authorities, his daughter is promptly released. But even though Paul’s parents sell their home, liquidate their assets, and borrow money from the Clayburns to meet the kidnappers’ demands, the villains hold on to Paul anyway. Asked whether he’s ever seen such an outcome in a double kidnapping, FBI deputy director Andrew Strong tells Lowell: “No, this is a new one.” But it’s not, as Strong knows all too well; it’s the third such active case, all involving honeymooning couples whose bridegrooms had served in the armed forces. After masterfully drawing readers in with his bare-knuckle account of the Tanners’ abduction and the attempt by their families and the CIA to tell the lies required to keep caring friends and the rapacious press at bay, Grisham effortlessly switches gears to follow CIA agent Rae Claire Russo and Stuart Nash, a former Department of Justice prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay who agrees to marry her so they can serve as bait for the kidnappers, whose motives include justice and revenge as well as cold hard cash. So much for the imprisoned Paul’s wistful reflection that “hopefully, it was only about money.”
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9780385550543
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2026
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
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