Genre fans will savor the espionage and political intrigue while cheering a spy who can dodge bullets with sophistication.
Australian spy Luthan Fennes returns for his third outing in Angliss’ (Stingerbones, 2013, etc.) thriller series, this time to find who’s behind the bombings of German embassies throughout the world.
Australian Security Intelligence Organisation operative Fennes, aka the Retimer, is in Ankara, Turkey, looking into connections between Turkey’s German Embassy and recent bombings at the German Embassy in Australia. He doesn’t prevent another bombing, but he does uncover info on Johann Weber, who works at the embassy and may have been a contact for the bombers. While Turkish police believe Fennes is responsible for the bombings, he searches for the person who ordered the embassy attacks. After Fennes narrowly escapes an assassination attempt, villagers save the injured man, and he returns the favor by tracking down Asli, a victim of human traffickers who’s been missing for two years. Angliss’ writing style takes some getting used to; he’s prone to uncommon words—e.g., “refaced” (here, meaning to face someone or something again)—and strange wording, as when Fennes “entered the Internet” on his mobile phone. But the espionage, reminiscent of James Bond novels, is centered on the protagonist’s mental capacity over physical prowess. Even the action scenes, of which there are quite a few, are meticulously plotted; it’s less about Fennes’ instinctual reaction than a distinct assessment each time someone shoots at him or tosses a grenade in his direction. Fennes also manages a great deal of chic: He’s often adorned in a black suit and tie (for that matter, so are many of the villains) and drives a top-of-the-line vehicle, like a BMW or his souped-up Rallyon, which he equates with the “famous modern Batmobile.” Asli acts as a romantic interest of sorts, but Fennes’ apparent love for a woman he hardly knows seems out of place and happens so quickly that it’s not very believable. Angliss takes his hero on an adventure around the globe—Moscow, Iraq, North Korea—and he augments his story with humor and dishy one-liners, as when an ensnared suspect threatens to kill Fennes and the spy nonchalantly responds, “I’ve heard that a million times.”
Genre fans will savor the espionage and political intrigue while cheering a spy who can dodge bullets with sophistication.Pub Date: March 12, 2014
ISBN: 978-1495448799
Page Count: 270
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 8, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Falls short of Crichton’s many blockbusters, but fun reading nonetheless, especially for those interested in the early days...
In 1876, professor Edward Cope takes a group of students to the unforgiving American West to hunt for dinosaur fossils, and they make a tremendous discovery.
William Jason Tertullius Johnson, son of a shipbuilder and beneficiary of his father’s largess, isn’t doing very well at Yale when he makes a bet with his archrival (because every young man has one): accompany “the bone professor” Othniel Marsh to the West to dig for dinosaur fossils or pony up $1,000, but Marsh will only let Johnson join if he has a skill they can use. They need a photographer, so Johnson throws himself into the grueling task of learning photography, eventually becoming proficient. When Marsh and the team leave without him, he hitches a ride with another celebrated paleontologist, Marsh’s bitter rival, Edward Cope. Despite warnings about Indian activity, into the Judith badlands they go. It’s a harrowing trip: they weather everything from stampeding buffalo to back-breaking work, but it proves to be worth it after they discover the teeth of what looks to be a giant dinosaur, and it could be the discovery of the century if they can only get them back home safely. When the team gets separated while transporting the bones, Johnson finds himself in Deadwood and must find a way to get the bones home—and stay alive doing it. The manuscript for this novel was discovered in Crichton’s (Pirate Latitudes, 2009, etc.) archives by his wife, Sherri, and predates Jurassic Park (1990), but if readers are looking for the same experience, they may be disappointed: it’s strictly formulaic stuff. Famous folk like the Earp brothers make appearances, and Cope and Marsh, and the feud between them, were very real, although Johnson is the author’s own creation. Crichton takes a sympathetic view of American Indians and their plight, and his appreciation of the American West, and its harsh beauty, is obvious.
Falls short of Crichton’s many blockbusters, but fun reading nonetheless, especially for those interested in the early days of American paleontology.Pub Date: May 23, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-247335-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
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