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
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally...
Yale’s secret societies hide a supernatural secret in this fantasy/murder mystery/school story.
Most Yale students get admitted through some combination of impressive academics, athletics, extracurriculars, family connections, and donations, or perhaps bribing the right coach. Not Galaxy “Alex” Stern. The protagonist of Bardugo’s (King of Scars, 2019, etc.) first novel for adults, a high school dropout and low-level drug dealer, Alex got in because she can see dead people. A Yale dean who's a member of Lethe, one of the college’s famously mysterious secret societies, offers Alex a free ride if she will use her spook-spotting abilities to help Lethe with its mission: overseeing the other secret societies’ occult rituals. In Bardugo’s universe, the “Ancient Eight” secret societies (Lethe is the eponymous Ninth House) are not just old boys’ breeding grounds for the CIA, CEOs, Supreme Court justices, and so on, as they are in ours; they’re wielders of actual magic. Skull and Bones performs prognostications by borrowing patients from the local hospital, cutting them open, and examining their entrails. St. Elmo’s specializes in weather magic, useful for commodities traders; Aurelian, in unbreakable contracts; Manuscript goes in for glamours, or “illusions and lies,” helpful to politicians and movie stars alike. And all these rituals attract ghosts. It’s Alex’s job to keep the supernatural forces from embarrassing the magical elite by releasing chaos into the community (all while trying desperately to keep her grades up). “Dealing with ghosts was like riding the subway: Do not make eye contact. Do not smile. Do not engage. Otherwise, you never know what might follow you home.” A townie’s murder sets in motion a taut plot full of drug deals, drunken assaults, corruption, and cover-ups. Loyalties stretch and snap. Under it all runs the deep, dark river of ambition and anxiety that at once powers and undermines the Yale experience. Alex may have more reason than most to feel like an imposter, but anyone who’s spent time around the golden children of the Ivy League will likely recognize her self-doubt.
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally dazzling sequels.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-31307-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
These characters are so beloved that readers may not mind when a few twists veer dangerously close to the absurd.
Three Gardner fan favorites—FBI agent Kimberly Quincy, Sgt. D.D. Warren of the Boston Police, and serial-killer–survivor–turned-vigilante Flora Dane—team up to untangle a series of murders, and lots of small-town secrets, in the Georgia hills.
On a hike in the hills outside the quaint tourist town of Niche, Georgia, a couple finds the partial skeletal remains of Lilah Abenito, who went missing 15 years ago. Lilah was thought to be one of the first victims connected to Jacob Ness, who kidnapped Flora eight years ago when she was a Boston college student and held her captive, mostly in a coffin-sized box, for 472 days. The chance to link the deceased Ness to additional crimes is impossible to pass up, and FBI agent Kimberly Quincy invites D.D., Flora (who is a confidential informant for D.D.), and computer analyst Keith Edgar, Flora's friend/love interest, to be part of her task force. A search through the hills turns up a mass grave full of more skeletal remains. While D.D. is updating the mayor, Howard Counsel, and his wife, Martha, who own the charming Mountain Laurel B&B, she becomes interested in their timid, fearful maid, a young Hispanic woman who's brain damaged and unable to speak following a car accident when she was a child. When Martha suddenly hangs herself (or so it seems), D.D. realizes something very odd is going on at ye olde B&B. Gardner juggles multiple narratives, including that of the Counsels’ nameless maid, with ease. However, the involvement of two civilians in a major federal task force is initially hard to swallow, as are a few supernatural elements Gardner (Look for Me, 2018, etc.) shoehorns in. But Flora’s tentative romance with Keith and her realization that she might finally be thriving, not just surviving, are bright spots, as is Gardner’s evolving and sensitive exploration of trauma and its insidious, lasting effects.
These characters are so beloved that readers may not mind when a few twists veer dangerously close to the absurd.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4500-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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