A mighty entertaining espionage thriller with elements that bring to mind The Magnificent Seven.
An attempt to spy on the rich and powerful takes a deadly turn in Joseph’s (The Wild Card, 2001, etc.) latest thriller.
Every year for more than a century, members of San Francisco’s all-male Bohemian Club, “a veritable bastion of global power and privilege,” have gathered for a midsummer encampment among the redwoods near idyllic Monte Rio on California’s Russian River. This year, four wild and crazy townies, who call themselves “The Russian River Society of Pirates and Thieves,” look forward to their own tradition—using the most advanced technology available to spy on these politicians, CEOs, and other major players as they behave “like the rowdy fraternity boys many of them once were.” It turns out that the Bohemian Club lies in the cross hairs of a Russian cartel that wants revenge on five American oil companies—each one led by a Boho—for fouling up a natural gas pipeline deal. FBI agent Teddy Swan and his partner, Paul Kruger, pay an unexpected visit to the Pirates; he wants them to help the agency in protecting the Bohos from terrorist attack. Also assisting is the Pirates’ favorite local deputy, the motorcycle-riding Officer Alice. After a long-winded preface, Joseph delivers a fun, fast-paced story, filled with diverse characters—some old (such as 70-year-old Butler Rhodes, one of the Pirates and a former sniper in Vietnam), some youngish (30-year-old math teacher Phillip Mercier), and many eccentric or geeky. Along the way, he offers strong descriptions (Rhodes, for example, is “Grizzled, tough as cheap jerky”), and realistic dialogue. It’s unclear exactly why the book is in 2009, however—although it may be to avoid discussion of the current political situation in the United States, or of more cutting-edge spy tech.
A mighty entertaining espionage thriller with elements that bring to mind The Magnificent Seven.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-68433-142-0
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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