A marvelous narrator ignites an engaging story of spies, deceit, and murky history.
CIA officers search for elusive truths in a world of startling secrets and double crossings in Beckner’s sequel.
It’s 2001, a decade after the events of Muir’s Gambit (2022). The CIA takes over the investigation of the murder of a Princeton University professor. The late Nathan Muir was once an agency recruiter, and now all of his agent networks are inexplicably gone—save for one agent. This mysterious man will only talk to CIA officer Tom Bishop, who’s in Malaysia, but the agency suspects that Bishop may actually be Muir’s killer. As Bishop hops off the grid overseas, the CIA sends attorney Russell Aiken to find him as his very first job in the field. Bishop, meanwhile, becomes entangled with a strange woman, and together they uncover secrets about Muir and other operatives with help from cryptic clues from the late Muir. Beckner’s novel, despite its length, moves at a steady clip. He masterfully bounces around the timeline, including events that occur days and sometimes months before Muir’s murder; it’s a labyrinthine approach but one that is always lucid. Aiken makes a compelling, edgy narrator who’s prone to blurting out seemingly random thoughts. He manages to recount Bishop’s side of things for readers, as well, and the plot gleefully spins off into a series of revelations and brief but explosive action scenes. Aiken likewise shines in offbeat moments of reflection: “Sometimes doing nothing is the best something to be doing because it leaves you open to something else.” As in the opening installment, Beckner deftly incorporates elements of the real world, from political figures to the 9/11 attacks, and leaves the storyline open for the trilogy’s finale.
A marvelous narrator ignites an engaging story of spies, deceit, and murky history.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2022
ISBN: 979-8985597431
Page Count: 506
Publisher: Montrose Station Press LLC
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A touching story of love and grief ends in an epic battle of good versus evil.
Roberts’ latest may move you to tears, or joy, or dread, or all three.
Every summer, John and Cora Fox visit Cora’s mother, Lucy Lannigan, in Redbud Hollow, Kentucky, leaving their children, 12-year-old Thea and 10-year-old Rem, for a two-week taste of heaven. The children love Grammie Lucy far more than John’s snooty family, which looks down on Cora. Lucy, a healer with deep Appalachian roots, loves animals, cooks the best meals, plays musical instruments, and makes soap and candles for her thriving business. Thea—who’s inherited the psychic abilities passed down through the women of Lucy’s family—has vivid magical dreams, one of which becomes a living nightmare when a psychopath robs and murders John and Cora as Thea watches helplessly. Thea’s description of the killer and her ability to see him in real time help the skeptical police catch Ray Riggs, who goes to prison for life. Although Thea and Rem go on to have a wonderful childhood with Grammie, Thea constantly wages a mental battle with Riggs, who tries to use his own psychic abilities to get into her mind. Over the years, Thea uses her imagination to become a game designer while the more business-minded Rem helps manage her career. Thea eventually builds a house near Lucy, where a newly arrived neighbor is her teen crush, singer-songwriter Tyler Brennan. Tyler has his own issues and is protective of his young son but slowly builds a loving relationship with Thea, whose silence about her abilities leads to a devastating misunderstanding. At first Thea tries to keep Riggs locked out of her mind. As her powers grow, she torments him. Finally, she realizes that she must win this battle and destroy him if she’s ever to have peace.
A touching story of love and grief ends in an epic battle of good versus evil.Pub Date: May 21, 2024
ISBN: 9781250289698
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
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