So well-adapted to the entire series, this could have been the late Tom Clancy’s second novel.
Not “too many months” after dispatching a tricky submarine issue in The Hunt for Red October, young Jack Ryan faces a deadly East German foe.
The trouble starts in 1985, near Area 51 in Nevada, where UFO believers witness a flash in the night sky and anticipate an extraterrestrial visit. Only the East German spy who happens to be among them suspects an earthly explanation. A woman guides him through a mountainous area, where he discovers the remains of a U.S. military aircraft he correctly presumes to be “beyond big” in importance. Making off with a small piece of the wing he must somehow smuggle across the Iron Curtain, he leaves a trail of dead and wounded in his wake. The U.S. suspects that someone has removed a piece of secret radar-absorbing material from the wreckage. Meanwhile in West Berlin, a low-level Foreign Service officer is asked to meet a possible defector, an encounter that takes a terrible turn. Meanwhile (this story has lots of meanwhiles), the East German aeronautical physicist Dr. Uwe Hauptman is doing important research on radar-absorbing surfaces. The CIA suspects it has a mole, whom they code-name Fledermaus. Jack Ryan and Mary Pat Foley cross through Checkpoint Charlie into East Berlin and bypass the “Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart,” known to us bourgeoisie as the Berlin Wall. There, they face a peck of trouble, but luckily, “Ryan wasn't exactly a neophyte when it came to hairy situations,” nor is Foley to be mistaken for a shrinking violet. Cameron is but one of the authors who so skillfully maintains the Clancy legacy that began in the 1980s. The many characters are all spot-on, the scope is wide-ranging, and the action reaches to the dreaded Hohenschönhausen Prison—readers are guaranteed to hate the freckle-faced guard Mitzi Graff as much as they will admire Ryan and Foley.
So well-adapted to the entire series, this could have been the late Tom Clancy’s second novel.Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-42275-5
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
