A fast-paced but improbable war tale.
During World War II, an officer aboard a submarine embarks on a dangerous mission and gets an uncommon peek into the future in this novel.
Lt. Mike Murphy, the executive officer aboard the Manta Ray, a United States submarine, is a respected seaman and “natural born leader.” But following a bad head injury, he begins to believe he’s someone occupying Murphy’s body, someone with memories of the future: “I’m another person, an invisible man inside.” He knows with certainty that the war will end well; the Japanese will become “one of our staunchest allies”; there will be smartphones; and the Brooklyn Dodgers will relocate to Los Angeles. He also knows classified information to which he couldn’t possibly be privy, and his superiors suspect he is schizophrenic. Meanwhile, the Manta Ray is assigned a perilous mission—using new technology that effectively renders the submarine invisible, Murphy and his crew will mount a stealth attack in Tokyo Harbor. Murphy falls in love with Lucy Charlesworth, an electrical engineer from Cambridge University onboard to steward the technology, a woman whom he seems to remember from a future life. Nyberg displays a remarkable knowledge of life on a submarine in the middle of the 20th century, an expertise that lends the swiftly paced action a considerable measure of authenticity. But the plot is as implausible as it is unfocused—the novel could easily have been 100 pages shorter. And the author’s writing style inclines toward the ponderously leaden and breathlessly melodramatic. At one point, Murphy muses: “Without light there is no form, without form there is no perceivable place. For instance, here, now; the sensation of space, and yes...time, the veneer of time...the coming and going of things, of people, their whispers like prayers, obsequies. Is this whence we come? Where we return? Death merely a gatekeeper?”
A fast-paced but improbable war tale.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-9970986-6-2
Page Count: 427
Publisher: Bowker
Review Posted Online: Sept. 11, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A fresh, funny, ambitious, and nuanced take on some of our oldest existential questions. Cannot wait for the TV series.
What would you do if you knew when you were going to die?
In the first page and a half of her latest page-turner, bestselling Australian author Moriarty introduces a large cast of fascinating characters, all seated on a flight to Sydney that’s delayed on the tarmac. There’s the “bespectacled hipster” with his arm in a cast; a very pregnant woman; a young mom with a screaming infant and a sweaty toddler; a bride and groom, still in their wedding clothes; a surly 6-year-old forced to miss a laser-tag party; a darling elderly couple; a chatty tourist pair; several others. No one even notices the woman who will later become a household name as the “Death Lady” until she hops up from her seat and begins to deliver predictions to each of them about the age they’ll be when they die and the cause of their deaths. Age 30, assault, for the hipster. Age 7, drowning, for the baby in arms. Age 43, workplace accident, for a 42-year-old civil engineer. Self-harm, age 28, for the lovely flight attendant, who is that day celebrating her 28th birthday. Over the next 126 chapters (some just a paragraph), you will get to know all these people, and their reactions to the news of their demise, very well. Best of all, you will get to know Cherry Lockwood, the Death Lady, and the life that brought her to this day. Is it true, as she repeatedly intones on the plane, that “fate won’t be fought”? Does this novel support the idea that clairvoyance is real? Does it find a means to logically dismiss the whole thing? Or is it some complex amalgam of these possibilities? Sorry, you won’t find that out here, and in fact not until you’ve turned all 500-plus pages. The story is a brilliant, charming, and invigorating illustration of its closing quote from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (we’re not going to spill that either).
A fresh, funny, ambitious, and nuanced take on some of our oldest existential questions. Cannot wait for the TV series.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9780593798607
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
Lapena’s talents shine in this irresistible novel about revenge, betrayal, and secrets.
So many suspects, so little evidence in Lapena’s latest tale of domestic suspense.
Busy mom Bryden Frost doesn’t see it coming after a morning fender bender involving a Tesla and its charming owner, Derek Gardner, sets her on a collision course with fate. Or does it? Just as in her other fast-moving, women-centric novels, including her breakout The Couple Next Door (2016), Lapena’s female protagonists appear to be living normal lives that some people might even envy—at least at first. When Bryden’s husband, Sam, returns home from work in Albany, New York, to find her missing but her purse and phone still in their apartment, a police investigation ensues. Did Bryden run away? Was she kidnapped? Or could she still be somewhere in the building? Sam is the prime suspect until police Det. Jayne Salter and her team hear from a source that Bryden was having an affair with Derek, something he denies. As Lapena builds her twisty plot, we soon see that these two men aren’t the only people who could be responsible for Bryden’s disappearance. Her sister, Lizzie, who has always been jealous of Bryden, has an addiction she’s hiding from the police, and Bryden’s best friend, Paige, carries a damaging secret as well. And what about the neighbor who was recently accused but not charged with kidnapping and raping a woman? Lapena excavates everyone’s secrets, exposing what’s really going on in the lives of Bryden’s family and friends. None of it is pretty. Lapena’s timely tale mixes the formidable dangers involved with online true-crime addiction with classic police work in a story that will make you wonder what secrets your family and friends are hiding and who, if anyone, you really know or can trust.
Lapena’s talents shine in this irresistible novel about revenge, betrayal, and secrets.Pub Date: July 29, 2025
ISBN: 9780593832448
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
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