An entertaining page-turner that mixes punchy shootouts with resonant soul-searching.
A reporter confronts terrorists, the Mafia, and fertility issues in Ebner’s thriller-series starter.
Teagan Penn is a 37-year-old Seattle journalist with a prominent facial dog-bite scar and a talent for drawing out celebrities in soul-baring interviews. Her own soul is troubled by her and her husband Todd’s inability to conceive a child and by news of nearly daily atrocities committed by KIL, an Islamic terrorist group. When KIL starts kidnapping and enslaving girls in the Middle East, Teagan’s frustrated maternal instincts prod her to launch a personal rescue mission of her own. She strikes a deal with a shadowy crime lord named Roman to raise $12 million, which he is to use to mount a mercenary operation called Project Rebound to rescue the girls. The caper goes awry before it even gets going, and after Teagan goes to Paris to untangle it, her hotel is attacked by KIL commandos bent on slaughtering all the guests. When she gets on the phone with Roman, he implies that he sent the shooters to murder her under cover of a massacre. After gunning down two terrorists herself and evacuating the hotel, Teagan is approached by CIA counterterrorism agent Robert Lexington, who drags her into an even murkier imbroglio. Lexington is secretly working for Italy’s Una Banca crime family, who want to kill Roman for betraying them; if Teagan assassinates Roman, he promises he’ll shield her from criminal charges for Project Rebound. This plot thickens further when Teagan gets unexpected news that changes her life. Soon, however, she sets off to hunt Roman down on the other side of the world.
This first installment of Ebner’s series suffers from an ungainly structure, with the narrative lurching from a storyline about improbably omnipotent terrorists to a different tale of implausibly omnipotent gangsters in its second half. Fortunately, much of the action is well staged and effective, especially Teagan’s stalking of Roman, which unfolds in unflashy scenes that highlight her doggedness before a blunt, brutal climax. Ebner gives his characters rich backstories and complex motivations that are reminiscent of a John le Carré novel, with Lexington intriguingly emerging as both victim and antagonist. Throughout, the author renders Teagan’s experiences in vivid prose that captures both the intimacy of motherhood (“After feeding her son, his little head would snuggle between her chin and shoulder…she could hear his every little breath and feel his tiny heart beating throughout his whole body”) and the jagged tensions of violence: “Teagan took a deep breath—ignoring the stabbing-like echo of the attacker’s assault rifle—stayed focused, exhaled and pulled the trigger.” In other passages, he evokes a George Smiley–esque mood of painful disillusionment: “ ‘You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs’ a supervisor had told him. But omelettes aren’t made from week old rotting bodies.” Overall, Teagan proves to be an appealing hero with depth and determination—readers will enjoy rooting for her. An entertaining page-turner that mixes punchy shootouts with resonant soul-searching.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2023
ISBN: 9780993061318
Page Count: 270
Publisher: Pen and Picture
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A standout in the series.
The sixth adventure of Harvard symbology professor Robert Langdon explores the mysteries of human consciousness, the demonic projects of the CIA, and the city of Prague.
“Ladies and gentlemen...we are about to experience a sea change in our understanding of how the brain works, the nature of consciousness, and in fact…the very nature of reality itself.” But first—Langdon’s in love! Brown’s devoted readers first met brilliant noetic scientist Katherine Solomon in The Lost Symbol (2009); she’s back as a serious girlfriend, engaging the committed bachelor in a way not seen before. The book opens with the pair in a luxurious suite at the Four Seasons in Prague. It’s the night after Katherine has delivered the lecture quoted above, setting the theme for the novel, which features a plethora of real-life cases and anomalies that seem to support the notion that human consciousness is not localized inside the human skull. Brown’s talent for assembling research is also evident in this novel’s alter ego as a guidebook to Prague, whose history and attractions are described in great and glowing detail. Whether you appreciate or skim past the innumerable info dumps on these and other topics (Jewish folklore fans—the Golem is in the house!), it goes without saying that concision is not a goal in the Dan Brown editing process. Speaking of editing, the nearly 700-page book is dedicated to Brown’s editor, who seems to appear as a character—to put it in the italicized form used for Brownian insight, Jason Kaufman must be Jonas Faukman! A major subplot involves the theft of Katherine’s manuscript from the secure servers of Penguin Random House; the delightful Faukman continues to spout witty wisecracks even when blindfolded and hogtied. There’s no shortage of action, derring-do, explosions, high-tech torture machines, attempted and successful murders, and opportunities for split-second, last-minute escapes; good thing Langdon, this aging symbology wonk, never misses swimming his morning laps. Readers who are not already dyed-in-the-wool Langdonites may find themselves echoing the prof’s own conclusion regarding the credibility of all this paranormal hoo-ha: At some point, skepticism itself becomes irrational.
A standout in the series.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9780385546898
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
Maybe not the most thrilling thriller, but the role of AI in coping with grief gives this novel pathos and interest.
A widowed and disgraced plastic surgeon is drawn into a Russian oligarch’s evil schemes.
Witherspoon’s adult fiction debut, co-authored with thrillermeister Coben, opens as heart surgery performed by Dr. Marc Adams in a North African refugee camp is interrupted by the explosive invasion of armed militants. It's the last we will see of Marc in this dimension. The next chapter jumps ahead one year to a ceremony at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore where his widow, Maggie McCabe, is supposed to be presenting an award in honor of her mother. Miserable and anxious about appearing in public after having lost her medical license, she consults with her late husband on her phone—not via supernatural means, but using a "griefbot," an amazingly lifelike and functional AI app created by her genius sister, Sharon. Once the griefbot coaxes her to brave the sneering masses, she learns she’s been replaced on the podium anyway. But she runs into a former professor, a celebrity plastic surgeon, who requests a meeting with her at his office in New York and won’t take no for an answer. Next thing she knows, there’s $10 million in her bank account and she’s on a private plane heading to a palace outside Moscow where she’s been engaged to perform off-the-record surgery on billionaire Oleg Ragoravich (new face) and his girlfriend, Nadia (new boobs). And…we’re off. A whirl of surgeries, chases, and escapes ensues as Maggie gradually comes to understand who these people are and what they have in mind for her, and how it connects to Marc and their missing friend and business partner, Trace Packer. She is aided by her delightful father-in-law, Porkchop, owner of a biker bar in New York City and a very handy guy to have on your team if you've run afoul of an international criminal organization. From the palace in Rublevka the action moves to Dubai and then Bordeaux, climaxing in a high-stakes illegal heart transplant. But wait—is Marc really dead? What happened to Trace? Who is Nadia really? Though these smoldering questions don’t quite catch fire, it's a good first try for Witherspoon.
Maybe not the most thrilling thriller, but the role of AI in coping with grief gives this novel pathos and interest.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781538774700
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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