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The Complete Martin Forn Series

Name: The Complete Martin Forn Series
Author: Matt Wilk
ISBN: 978-1-5371-8308-4

A SMALL TOWN SPY THRILLER

by Matt Wilk ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 27, 2016

All the perks of a sturdy spy tale, marred by some stumbles.

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A former Interpol operative and Green Beret comes out of retirement to battle terrorists, a cult, and a Russian crime syndicate in this trilogy of thrillers.

In the opening tale, Tchaikovsky’s Egg, Martin Forn’s quiet Indiana life is threatened by his need to kill a man. The aging ex-soldier and Interpol contractor may get his chance when KGB agents show up at his home. The Puravich Crime Syndicate is looking for a traitor—Martin’s wife, Clara Puravich, who, it seems, skipped town. Soon thereafter, someone abducts his daughter Sara’s boyfriend, Johnny Corn-Walters. Since he’s the last living son of Tenskwatawa the Shawnee Prophet, Johnny’s kidnapping comes with a hefty ransom demand. This could be the repercussions of a tribal war or a move by the local Starology cult, but it becomes personal for Martin when abductees include Sara and his son, Elias. In The Price of Peace, a reactivated Martin takes an Interpol contract to pay back expensive intelligence he acquired while searching for his children. He also has the opportunity to get revenge for a fellow soldier killed in action, while Johnny and Sara join Interpol to try to rid Indiana of the Puravich Syndicate’s continued presence. Later, an interest in the Assyrian Plague, a terrorist group, sends Martin and Johnny overseas in The Pale Horse Returned, hoping for proof of the Plague’s “ongoing genocide.” Wilk’s (The Last Heroes Before Judgement, 2016) nicely paced series delivers its fair share of action. Martin’s kept on his toes, for example, by the first story’s overload of agencies, from the CIA to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. And he’s a tailor-made spy, with Clara asserting that contract killing for Martin is a “vacation.” The book’s unfortunately impeded by a baffling structure. Ever shifting, first-person perspective between Martin and Johnny, for starters, becomes hard to track, with no indications of change. Dialogue, too, never has an identified speaker; Wilk shrewdly ensures clarity with oft-uttered names, but that doesn’t make transitioning between narrators any easier. Grammatical and spelling mistakes are likewise distracting (for example, a person’s contacts that “wreak of international espionage”). Notwithstanding, Wilk skillfully ties the stories together with consistent characters and an overarching theme of family versus the life of an operative.

All the perks of a sturdy spy tale, marred by some stumbles.

Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-5371-8308-4

Page Count: 362

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2016

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.

Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.

Pub Date: March 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-609-60737-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

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Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.