An intriguing but uneven crime tale.
In this World War II thriller, a British detective tries to investigate a series of possibly connected murders that involve espionage and illicit art dealing.
In 1942, DCI Frank Merlin of Scotland Yard has his hands full—London is brimming with American soldiers and the crimes they often commit and stymied by the fact that the United States military is permitted to autonomously govern its own affairs. A series of murders—at least one of which may have been committed by an American soldier—occurs in quick succession. Tomas Barboza, a Spaniard working for MI6, is found murdered, his throat slit. Then Frederick Vermeulen is shot in the head neatly, a mark of professional precision. Vermeulen was also a British spy and had infiltrated the Germans as a double agent. Moreover, he was brokering a shady art deal for Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian, an extravagantly rich oil tycoon. The art in question: two authentic works by Leonardo da Vinci almost certainly stolen from a Jewish family by the Nazis. The seller is Leo Van Buren, whose “business empire was taken over lock, stock and barrel” by the Germans after they “swept into Holland.” Van Buren turns up in the Thames, another murder victim. In this ambitious tale, readers are challenged to connect the dots between these different crimes which may or may not be entangled within a single, conspiratorial skein. Ellis constructs a tableau of London during the war that is as captivatingly vivid as it is edifying, one riven by crime and strained by the presence of foreigners not quite subject to British law. In addition, the author deftly depicts the luridly murky art market that emerged during the war, one perfect for cultural predators. But the plot is overly complicated—readers will need an Excel spreadsheet to properly track all the characters and the subplots to which they belong. This narrative density becomes so prohibitive that it finally hampers the story’s energy and momentum.
An intriguing but uneven crime tale.Pub Date: May 19, 2022
ISBN: 9781786159885
Page Count: 413
Publisher: Headline Accent
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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Squeamish readers will find this isn’t their cup of tea.
Dexter meets Killing Eve in Wallace’s dark comic thriller debut.
While accepting condolences following her father’s funeral, 30-something narrator Claire receives an email saying that one of her paintings is a finalist for a prize. But her joy is short-circuited the next morning when she learns in a second apologetic note that the initial email had been sent to the wrong Claire. The sender, Lucas Kane, is “terribly, terribly sorry” for his mistake. Claire, torn between her anger and suicidal thoughts, has doubts about his sincerity and stalks him to a London pub, where his fate is sealed: “I stare at Lucas Kane in real life, and within moments I know. He doesn’t look sorry.” She dispatches and buries Lucas in her back garden, but this crime does not go unnoticed. Proud of her meticulous standards as a serial killer, Claire wonders if her grief for her father is making her reckless as she seeks to identify the blackmailer among the members of her weekly bereavement support group. The female serial killer as antihero is a growing subgenre (see Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer, 2018), and Wallace’s sociopathic protagonist is a mordantly amusing addition; the tool she uses to interact with ordinary people while hiding her homicidal nature is especially sardonic: “Whenever I’m unsure of how I’m expected to respond, I use a cliché. Even if I’m not sure what it means, even if I use it incorrectly, no one ever seems to mind.” The well-written storyline tackles some tough subjects—dementia, elder abuse, and parental cruelty—but the convoluted plot starts to drag at the halfway point. Given the lack of empathy in Claire’s narration, most of the characters come across as not very likable, and the reader tires of her sneering contempt.
Squeamish readers will find this isn’t their cup of tea.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780143136170
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
Small-town claustrophobia and intimacies alike propel this twist-filled psychological thriller.
The loss of her police officer father and the discovery of an abandoned car in a local lake raise chilling questions regarding a young woman’s family history.
When Hazel Sharp returns to her hometown of Mirror Lake, North Carolina, for her father’s memorial, she and the other townspeople are confronted by a challenging double whammy: As they’re grieving the loss of beloved longtime police officer Detective Perry Holt, a disturbing sight appears in the lake, whose waterline is receding because of an ongoing drought—an old, unidentifiable car, which has likely been lurking there for years. Hazel temporarily leaves her Charlotte-based building-renovation business in the capable hands of her partners and reconnects with her brothers, Caden and Gage; her Uncle Roy; her old fling and neighbor, Nico; and her schoolfriend, Jamie, now a mother and married to Caden. Tiny, relentless suspicions rise to the metaphorical surface along with that waterlogged vehicle: There have been a slew of minor break-ins; two people go missing; and then, a second abandoned car is discovered. The novel digs deeper into Hazel’s family history—her father was a widow when he married Hazel’s mother, who later left the family, absconding with money and jewels—and Miranda, a consummate professional when it comes to exposing the small community tensions that naturally arise when people live in close proximity for generations, exposes revelation after twisty revelation: “Everything mattered disproportionately in a small town. Your success, but also your failure. Everyone knows might as well have been our town motto.”
Small-town claustrophobia and intimacies alike propel this twist-filled psychological thriller.Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781668010440
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Marysue Rucci Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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