Taut pacing and complicated characters shape this rich examination of the modern family.
British bestseller Jewell's last few novels have been a revelation—emotionally sophisticated and complex—and this latest, which gradually rewrites the history of a "perfect" family, is a fine follow-up.
Late one night, alone and uncharacteristically drunk, 30-year-old Maya is hit by a London bus. Was it an accident? Suicide? Her husband, Adrian, can't imagine why his sweet Maya would want to kill herself, but as the novel unfolds, cracks are revealed in his perfect family. An architect pushing 50, Adrian Wolfe is a lovely man, as everyone agrees. His first wife, Susie, mother of the gregarious Cat and pretentious Luke, both in their 20, holds no hard feelings that he left her in the country for a glamorous London life with the chic Caroline. Caroline lives in their stunningly restored Islington townhouse with their three children, all under 12, Otis, Pearl, and Beau. When, four years ago, Adrian left Caroline for Maya, he made every effort to keep the family intact—all of them holiday together (three wives, five children) and happily share custody. Or so Adrian insists to anyone who asks. When a strange woman begins stalking him, and Luke finds threatening emails addressed to Maya on her laptop, Adrian begins to investigate. In flashbacks from Maya's perspective, another side of the Wolfe family is revealed—she feels like an interloper, childless in a family where children are totems, and is slowly disintegrating from the onslaught of anonymous emails (though she knows they must be from a family member—the missives are too intimate and immediate to have been written by anyone else). Most damning of all, she finds herself falling in love with the family's other outsider, Luke. Adrian is convinced the woman stalking him has answers, if only he can track her down. Although it is certain no one literally pushed Maya into that bus, Jewell shapes the novel as part whodunit, part psychological thriller: Maya was excised from the family, but why and by whom?
Taut pacing and complicated characters shape this rich examination of the modern family.Pub Date: June 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4767-9218-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: April 1, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
Thriller fans will delight in this latest escapade. Cussler and co-author Burcell have delivered a winner.
The 10th and latest Sam and Remi Fargo adventure (The Romanov Ransom, 2017, etc.) is a fast-paced tale that reaches back to the early days of automotive glory.
In Manchester, England, in 1906, the Gray Ghost has gone missing. That’s the Rolls-Royce prototype developed by Charles Rolls and Henry Royce, and the loss threatens to financially ruin them. They hire a detective to locate it, but he is murdered. In the present day, Sam and Remi Fargo hear about the car, which turned up after World War II but is now missing again. It's always been owned by the Payton family, which generations ago was the Oren-Payton family, and may be worth many millions of dollars. Raising the stakes even higher, the 1906 thieves may have hidden treasure inside the car, though there was no trace of it when the Gray Ghost was found after the war. But jealous modern-day cousin Arthur Oren has the car stolen and then loses track of it—has the thief he hired stolen it twice? It’s a complicated and clever plot, with Sam and Remi trying to find it for the current owner, Lord Albert Payton, Viscount Wellswick. The 1906 journal of Jonathon Payton, fifth Viscount Wellswick, provides a solid backstory. The Fargos are great series characters, whip-smart and altruistic self-made multimillionaires who can afford to take time from their charity work to dabble in dangerous adventures. Oren knows they’re involved, and he wants them both dead and the car returned. An accomplice suggests first making the Fargos destitute by freezing their bank accounts and credit cards. Then the bad guys can arrange a fake suicide. It’s fun to watch Sam and Remi get out of dicey scrapes, once by driving an Ahrens-Fox pumper fire engine out of a blazing building. Oren asks, “How hard is it to knock off two socialites?” He finds out the hard way; he should have just acquainted himself with Cussler’s series.
Thriller fans will delight in this latest escapade. Cussler and co-author Burcell have delivered a winner.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7352-1873-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
Bulky, balky, talky.
In an updated quest for the Holy Grail, the narrative pace remains stuck in slo-mo.
But is the Grail, in fact, holy? Turns out that’s a matter of perspective. If you’re a member of that most secret of clandestine societies, the Priory of Sion, you think yes. But if your heart belongs to the Roman Catholic Church, the Grail is more than just unholy, it’s downright subversive and terrifying. At least, so the story goes in this latest of Brown’s exhaustively researched, underimagined treatise-thrillers (Deception Point, 2001, etc.). When Harvard professor of symbology Robert Langdon—in Paris to deliver a lecture—has his sleep interrupted at two a.m., it’s to discover that the police suspect he’s a murderer, the victim none other than Jacques Saumière, esteemed curator of the Louvre. The evidence against Langdon could hardly be sketchier, but the cops feel huge pressure to make an arrest. And besides, they don’t particularly like Americans. Aided by the murdered man’s granddaughter, Langdon flees the flics to trudge the Grail-path along with pretty, persuasive Sophie, who’s driven by her own need to find answers. The game now afoot amounts to a scavenger hunt for the scholarly, clues supplied by the late curator, whose intent was to enlighten Sophie and bedevil her enemies. It’s not all that easy to identify these enemies. Are they emissaries from the Vatican, bent on foiling the Grail-seekers? From Opus Dei, the wayward, deeply conservative Catholic offshoot bent on foiling everybody? Or any one of a number of freelancers bent on a multifaceted array of private agendas? For that matter, what exactly is the Priory of Sion? What does it have to do with Leonardo? With Mary Magdalene? With (gulp) Walt Disney? By the time Sophie and Langdon reach home base, everything—well, at least more than enough—has been revealed.
Bulky, balky, talky.Pub Date: March 18, 2003
ISBN: 0-385-50420-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2003
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