Beaton, never as convincing in this cartoonish series as in her tales of Hamish MacBeth (Death of a Village, 2002, etc.),...
Beaton’s grumpy, depressive heroine (Agatha Raisin and the Day the Floods Came, 2002, etc.) has little reason to be cheerful when the curtain comes up this time around. Abandoned in the village of Cardely by her ex-husband James, she’s left with no male company save her neighbor John Armitage, a novelist who seems at first unmoved by their proximity. But things brighten with the arrival of vicar Alf Bloxby’s new assistant, movie-star-gorgeous curate Tristan Delon. Church attendance naturally soars, and Agatha is even more thrilled when Tristan offers himself as a skilled money manager. The morning after their dinner, however, Tristan is found stabbed to death in the vicar’s study. When his murder is followed by the killings of two more women from the village, Armitage thinks he and Agatha should investigate—despite warnings from detective Bill Wong to stay out of it. Their queries take them to London and to business mogul Richard Binser, whose worshipful secretary Miss Partle discloses the news that her boss fell for an expensive scam of Tristan’s. Before it’s all over, Armitage will have moved to London and Agatha become the target of yet another murder attempt in an absurdly melodramatic denouement.
Beaton, never as convincing in this cartoonish series as in her tales of Hamish MacBeth (Death of a Village, 2002, etc.), goes way overboard in one of Agatha’s lesser puzzles. Even so, things keep moving fast enough to hold the faithful’s interest.Pub Date: April 7, 2003
ISBN: 0-312-20768-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2003
The moral overcomes the mystery in this sobering cautionary tale.
A hard-partying flight attendant runs afoul of Russian conspirators.
Cassandra Bowden, like her namesake, the prophetess who is never believed, has problems. A flight attendant since college, Cassie, now nearing 40, has a penchant for drinking to the blackout point and sleeping with strange men. On a flight to Dubai, while serving in first class, she flirts with hedge fund manager Alex Sokoloff, an American with Russian roots and oligarchic connections. She repairs to his hotel room, and during the drunken bacchanal that follows, Miranda, apparently a business acquaintance of Alex’s, visits with more vodka. The next morning Cassie wakes up next to Alex, who lies dead, his throat cut. She has blacked out much of the night, so although she’d grown rather fond of him, how can she be sure she didn’t kill him? Rushing back for the return flight, she decides not to disclose what happened, at least not until she's back home in New York City, where the justice system is arguably less draconian than in Dubai. At JFK, the FBI interviews the deplaning crew, and Cassie plays dumb. Unfortunately, her walk of shame through the hotel lobby was captured on security cam. Sporadically intercut with Cassie’s point of view is that of Elena, a Russian assassin for hire, who had presented herself as Miranda in Alex’s hotel room. After being thwarted by Cassie’s presence from executing Alex then, she returned to finish the job but decided not to make collateral damage of his passed-out bedmate, a bad call she must rectify per her sinister handler, Viktor. In the novel’s flabby midsection, Cassie continues to alternately binge-drink and regret the consequences as her lawyer, her union, and even the FBI struggle to protect her from herself. Although Bohjalian (The Sleepwalker, 2017, etc.) strives to render Cassie sympathetic, at times he can’t resist taking a judgmental stance toward her. As Cassie’s addiction becomes the primary focus, the intricate plotting required of an international thriller lags.
The moral overcomes the mystery in this sobering cautionary tale.Pub Date: March 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-385-54241-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Patterson's thrillers (Virgin, 1980; Black Market, 1986) have plummeted in quality since his promising debut in The Thomas Berryman Number (1976)—with this latest being the sorriest yet: a clanky and witless policer about a criminal mastermind and the cop sworn to take him down. Aside from watching sympathetic homicide dick John ("Stef") Stefanovich comeing to terms with a wheelchair-bound life—legacy of a shotgun blast to the back by drug-and-gun-running archfiend Alexandre St.-Germain—the major interest here lies in marvelling at the author's trashing of fiction convention. The whopper comes early: although St.-Germain is explicity described as being machine-gunned to death by three vigilante cops in a swank brothel (". . .a submachine gun blast nearly ripped off the head of Alexandre St.-Germain"; "The mobster's head and most of his neck had been savaged by the machine-gun volley. The body looked desecrated. . ."), before you know it this latter-day Moriarty is stepping unscathed out of an airplane. What gives? Authorial cheating, that's what—thinly glossed over with some mumbling later on about a "body double." Not that St.-Germain's ersatz death generated much suspense anyway, with subsequent action focusing on, among other items, the gory killings of assorted mob bosses by one of the vigilante cops, and Stef's viewing of pornographic tapes confiscated from that brothel. But readers generous enough to plod on will get to read about the newly Lazarus-ized St.-Germain's crass efforts to revitalize and consolidate the world's crime syndicates ("the Midnight Club"), Stef's predictable tumble for a sexy true-crime writer, and how (isn't one miracle enough for Patterson?) at book's end Stef walks again and gets to embrace a rogue cop who's murdered several people. Ironsides with a badge and a lobotomy.
Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1988
ISBN: 0446676411
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1988
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