Hardcore action here. Greaney and the Gray Man are on their game.
The Gray Man dodges death and whups the bad guys for the 12th time in this nonstop thriller.
A banker steals records from his Swiss employer, hoping to expose corruption. He stores the information on a burner phone, and everybody wants it—not least the Russians and the CIA. Court Gentry, the man of many monikers—the Gray Man, Violator, and Six—is pulled off his job of blowing up “oligarchs’ big toys,” i.e., their mega-yachts, to help find the phone. He’s ex–CIA, and now he’s a freelancer, “only taking contracts he thought to be principled.” There’s excitement even before the main plotline as limpets spread shock waves under the sea. Meanwhile, he pines for his erstwhile lover Zoya Zakharova, the ex–SVR agent who’d once tried to kill him until their hormones kicked in. Now she feels adrift, her only companions being bottles of vodka and lines of cocaine. And wouldn't you know, a phone call pulls her from her stupor. If you’re not too damn drunk, a voice tells her, we need you to find a phone with stolen banking information before anyone else gets their hands on it. Paraphrasing Casablanca: Of all the plotlines in all the thrillers in all the world, Zoya walks into Violator’s. But the two assassins meet under the most incommodious of circumstances. Hmm. Do they kiss or kill? Hint: This isn't a romance novel. Readers will have great fun as Gentry manages to survive, sometimes in implausible ways. You'll think he is done for on a Swiss train until you see there are 200 pages to go and remember that he's the series hero. So no spoilers there. But that train ride provides the story’s most riveting action until the blazing finale. Series fans already know that the CIA, specifically Suzanne Brewer, has a kill order out for Gentry. Brewer has always been a scheming antagonist, but now she truly reveals the darkness of her character. Not much is predictable but for the actions of CIA agent Angela Lacy, who has never shot anyone before and is loath to do so now. Alert readers will be thinking, Come on Angela! You can do it!
Hardcore action here. Greaney and the Gray Man are on their game.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-54810-3
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
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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