A thoughtful, engaging espionage tale that propels a young man into adulthood.
A young French spy comes of age during his adventures.
Jacques Laurent is not quite 17 years old in the opening pages of this novel, hiking some Argentine mountains with his uncle Ignacio, a local rancher. When they reach the summit and return to Ignacio’s ranch, Jacques meets Irina, the daughter of a friend of their extended Russian family, who says she is passing through the area on vacation. It turns out Irina is an assassin on the run after killing a Russian expatriate. Jacques and his uncle help her escape, and the teen falls in love along the way. Jacques returns to France to start college, and shortly before graduation, he is recruited by a French spy agency. He balances graduate studies with undercover assignments and frequent affairs, with Irina always remaining in his mind. They reconnect several years later and make plans to leave their respective agencies and move to Argentina, where Jacques will take over his uncle’s ranches. Irina disappears, and when Jacques learns that she was captured on a mission, he turns one of his own assignments into a rescue attempt. Rousset’s novel combines standard elements of the spy thriller—battle scenes, conspiracies, a hero who is irresistible to women of all nationalities—with the soulful introspection of a man most at home wandering the mountains, and it generally does so to good effect. There is a distinct element of wish fulfillment, as Jacques falls into bed with nearly every woman who crosses his path (“Fatima listened to me in silence for a few moments before placing her hands on my face and kissing me lightly on the lips”), and the narrative does drag at times. There is some attempt to grapple with the ethics of espionage, and Jacques struggles the first time he kills a person. But for the most part, right and wrong are clearly delineated, and the engrossing book is more interested in exploring the experiences of an individual than broader geopolitical questions.
A thoughtful, engaging espionage tale that propels a young man into adulthood.Pub Date: May 22, 2022
ISBN: 9781665560375
Page Count: 330
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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