An engaging mix of humor, mystery, history, and geologic curiosities.
Old treasure, murder, and beautiful women send a geologist across the Arizona desert into Mexico in Terret’s mystery.
Nick Cameron, a “consulting geologist,” is having dinner in a “desiccated dump in the flat Sonoran Desert” in Arizona when in walks Theo, a dame “hotter than a Soviet drill bit at the bottom of the Kola Superdeep Borehole.” She’s got “emerald eyes,” “marathoner thighs,” “stratovolcano breasts,” a stash of valuable agates of mysterious origin, and a Smith & Wesson snub-nosed revolver. “This dame knows what she’s doing,” Nick says to the reader, who is cast in the role of confidant; it’s a tricky literary device that, for the most part, the author pulls off. Soon, Nick is embroiled in a mystery involving the agates’ provenance, crooked marketing consultants, plundered museum funds, a beautiful industrial spy, a treasure-trove of Mexican gold ore with historic connections to Pancho Villa, and a “homicidal hobo” intent on making Nick his next victim. Terret successfully weaves the disparate threads of the complicated plot together, layering the narrative with fascinating, well-informed geological references and leavening the proceedings with humor, evoking the lingo and brash attitudes of old detective pulp fiction novels throughout. Women are “dames” (and mostly set dressing), their legs are “gams,” guns are “roscoes,”, and murder victims are “whacked.” The author conveys real feeling with Nick’s origin story: At age 13, he discovered his grandfather’s stash of 1950s detective novels, and the two bonded over their mutual enjoyment of the genre, using the books’ tough-guy lingo whenever they got together until the older man’s death. Terret falters, though, when Nick’s enigmatic friend Frankie, a Navajo-Italian jewelry designer who calls the shots in the multi-pronged investigation, briefly takes over the narrative from Nick to explain his actions—this sudden switch breaks Nick’s conversational connection with the reader and undercuts Frankie’s mystique with unnecessary exposition. The text includes Nick’s clue lists and a few line drawings of code symbols, floor plans, and landscapes to clarify plot points and add visual interest.
An engaging mix of humor, mystery, history, and geologic curiosities.Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9781684632886
Page Count: 280
Publisher: SparkPress
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Everything you’d expect from Grisham, and this time something more.
After more than three decades of producing bestselling legal thrillers, Grisham tries his hand at a whodunit.
Eleanor Barnett wants Simon Latch to write her a will. That’s pretty much his job description, since practicing law in Braxton, Virginia, for 18 years hasn’t given him much opportunity to spread his wings. But the case of Netty, as she insists he call her, is different. She’s an 85-year-old widow whose second husband, Harry Korsak, left her with something like $20 million in cash and securities. She has a pair of stepsons, Clyde and Jerry Korsak, she’s determined to disinherit. And she already has a will, a document Wally Thackerman drafted a few weeks ago that basically allowed him, as Simon soon discovers, to pillage her estate. So instead of following his usual procedure and asking his longtime secretary, Matilda Clark, to type out the will, Simon types it himself and has it witnessed without saying anything to her. Of course he’d never do what Wally Thackerman did, but given his poverty, his gambling addiction, and his estrangement from his wife, Paula, whose income is a lot more stable than his own, he wouldn’t mind drawing just a bit on Netty’s wealth. As it happens, his new client turns out to be more trouble than she’s worth, maybe even more trouble than she would’ve been worth to Wally. And when she ends up dying, her death is swiftly identified as murder, with every indication that Simon killed her himself. The whodunit is unremarkable, but Grisham handles the legal complexities of the case with professional finesse and adds a wonderfully poignant portrait of a nothingburger lawyer trying his best to keep things more or less legal.
Everything you’d expect from Grisham, and this time something more.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9780385548984
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A standout in the series.
The sixth adventure of Harvard symbology professor Robert Langdon explores the mysteries of human consciousness, the demonic projects of the CIA, and the city of Prague.
“Ladies and gentlemen...we are about to experience a sea change in our understanding of how the brain works, the nature of consciousness, and in fact…the very nature of reality itself.” But first—Langdon’s in love! Brown’s devoted readers first met brilliant noetic scientist Katherine Solomon in The Lost Symbol (2009); she’s back as a serious girlfriend, engaging the committed bachelor in a way not seen before. The book opens with the pair in a luxurious suite at the Four Seasons in Prague. It’s the night after Katherine has delivered the lecture quoted above, setting the theme for the novel, which features a plethora of real-life cases and anomalies that seem to support the notion that human consciousness is not localized inside the human skull. Brown’s talent for assembling research is also evident in this novel’s alter ego as a guidebook to Prague, whose history and attractions are described in great and glowing detail. Whether you appreciate or skim past the innumerable info dumps on these and other topics (Jewish folklore fans—the Golem is in the house!), it goes without saying that concision is not a goal in the Dan Brown editing process. Speaking of editing, the nearly 700-page book is dedicated to Brown’s editor, who seems to appear as a character—to put it in the italicized form used for Brownian insight, Jason Kaufman must be Jonas Faukman! A major subplot involves the theft of Katherine’s manuscript from the secure servers of Penguin Random House; the delightful Faukman continues to spout witty wisecracks even when blindfolded and hogtied. There’s no shortage of action, derring-do, explosions, high-tech torture machines, attempted and successful murders, and opportunities for split-second, last-minute escapes; good thing Langdon, this aging symbology wonk, never misses swimming his morning laps. Readers who are not already dyed-in-the-wool Langdonites may find themselves echoing the prof’s own conclusion regarding the credibility of all this paranormal hoo-ha: At some point, skepticism itself becomes irrational.
A standout in the series.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9780385546898
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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