British spymasters use high finance to bring low a villainous arms-dealer in another slick thriller from Davies (Nest of Vipers, 1994). Recruited by M16 after graduating from Oxford, drop-dead beauty Eva Cunningham proves a whiz at undercover work in the Far East. Playing her role too well, Eva becomes a heroin addict to infiltrate a drug ring run as a sideline by Robie Frazer, a wealthy English businessman whose stock in trade is selling secret weapons systems to China. When Frazer betrays a friend of Eva's to the Singapore police, she's brought in from the cold for detox. Four years on, vengeful Eva is summoned home again by the SIS for an all-out campaign against Frazer, who (mindful of Hong Kong's 1997 handover) is also sojourning in London. With help from fellow Oxonian Cassie Stewart, a lissome merchant banker who doesn't know her chum is on the intelligence game, Eva lures the corrupt taipan into a risky deal involving a Vietnamese diamond mine. She also beds him, to the consternation of her M16 controller, Andrew Stormont, whose brief is anti-proliferation. While Cassie sets up funding for what she believes is a legitimate project through the raffish Vancouver Stock Exchange, Eva and Frazer have at one another in the boardroom as well as boudoir. Eva's luck runs out when an assassin imported by Frazer to terminate a recalcitrant informant recognizes her as a former mule. Frazer whisks his faithless lover off to Hanoi, and Cassie follows hard on their heels. Having learned Frazer has a cunning plan to use ore samples to distribute narcotics, les girls find themselves in mortal peril. By no means overmatched, the resourceful Eva engineers a daring escape and returns to the scene of Frazer's crimes to even the score. An immensely entertaining fiscal thriller notable for its exotic venues, though one that draws precious few distinctions between the good guys and bad. (First printing of 50,000; Literary Guild selection; author tour)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-385-48038-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1995
Readers may wish to tackle this heart-pounding novel in highly populated, well-lit areas—snacks optional.
Some thrillers produce shivers, others trigger goose bumps; Cutter’s graphic offering will have readers jumping out of their skins.
Scoutmaster Dr. Tim Riggs takes his troop for their annual camping trip to Falstaff Island, an uninhabited area not far from their home on Prince Edward Island. The five 14-year-old boys who comprise Troop 52 are a diverse group: popular school jock, Kent, whose father is the chief of police; best friends Ephraim and Max, one the son of a petty thief who’s serving time in prison and the other the son of the coroner who also serves as the local taxidermist; Shelley, an odd loner with a creepy proclivity for animal torture and touching girls’ hair; and Newton, the overweight nerdy kid who’s the butt of the other boys’ jokes. When a skeletal, voracious, obviously ill man shows up on the island the first night of their trip, Tim’s efforts to assist him unleash a series of events which the author describes in gruesome, deliciously gory detail. Tom Padgett is the subject of a scientific test gone horribly wrong, or so it seems, and soon, the Scouts face a nightmare that worms its way into the group and wreaks every kind of havoc imaginable. With no way to leave the island (the boat Tom arrived on is disabled, and the troop was dropped off by a different boat), the boys fight to survive. Cutter’s narrative of unfolding events on the island is supplemented with well-placed interviews, pages from diaries, and magazine and newspaper articles, which provide answers to the reader in bits and pieces—but perhaps more importantly, it also delivers much-needed respites from the intense narrative as the boys battle for their lives on the island. Cutter (who created this work under a pseudonym) packs a powerful punch by plunging readers into gut-wrenching, explicit imagery that’s not for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach.
Readers may wish to tackle this heart-pounding novel in highly populated, well-lit areas—snacks optional.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-1771-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...
Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.
Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: He’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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