Spy fiction at its headiest and most addictive.
Despite embarrassing the CIA by exposing a high-ranking agent’s efforts to rig the 1996 Russian elections and murder people to keep the operation a secret, field agent Ari Falk is drafted for a sensitive undercover job in this standalone sequel to The Collaborators (2024).
Why would his boss, Asha Tamaskar, the CIA’s edgy new deputy director of covert operations, turn to him to infiltrate a radical European group bent on doing grave damage to Western interests? Who better to play double agent than an operative the Company “burn[ed]…before the entire world” and for whose actions the U.S. had planned to apologize to Russia before that country’s invasion of Ukraine “rendered this and every other issue moot.” Since being outed for having passed the incriminating dossier to a WikiLeaks-type publisher—an action for which some people consider him a hero—Falk has been hiding out in the Republic of Georgia. Now back on the beat, learning how to be a double agent as he goes, he pursues the intel needed to thwart the radical group’s coldly self-regarding front man, Felix Burnham, a onetime CIA agent and American citizen born in Russia. Falk’s increasingly dangerous mission takes him across Europe, out in the open, from Tbilisi to Prague to London, through checkpoints and in the crosshairs of an elusive enforcer known as Cormorant. A ghostlike presence, Cormorant has been killing people for decades. His most recent victim: the publisher of the dossier. While James Bond, Jack Ryan, and Jason Bourne are invoked here and there’s plenty of action and intrigue, the true nature of espionage is revealed as far less glamorous: “Spycraft was a field of empty traps, rusting open.” Idov offers real insight into the self-protective games his characters play. The cagey CIA asset Katya Lisichenko “carried herself like a bearer of secrets, careful not to trip and spill. Tamaskar had seen this type of apprehension in assets before. It usually meant the real deal. It was always the ones with nothing to tell who wouldn’t stop talking.”
Spy fiction at its headiest and most addictive.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2026
ISBN: 9781668082287
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.
What hasn’t legendary legal eagle Grisham tried yet? How about a thriller about serial kidnapping and international terrorism.
When Paul and Chelsea Tanner disappear during a day trip on their Paris honeymoon, their abductors demand a ransom of $2 million from Chelsea’s wealthy parents, and a few days later the same sum from Paul’s much less well-heeled parents. After orthopedist Lowell Clayburn, Chelsea’s father, ponies up the ransom without breathing a word to the authorities, his daughter is promptly released. But even though Paul’s parents sell their home, liquidate their assets, and borrow money from the Clayburns to meet the kidnappers’ demands, the villains hold on to Paul anyway. Asked whether he’s ever seen such an outcome in a double kidnapping, FBI deputy director Andrew Strong tells Lowell: “No, this is a new one.” But it’s not, as Strong knows all too well; it’s the third such active case, all involving honeymooning couples whose bridegrooms had served in the armed forces. After masterfully drawing readers in with his bare-knuckle account of the Tanners’ abduction and the attempt by their families and the CIA to tell the lies required to keep caring friends and the rapacious press at bay, Grisham effortlessly switches gears to follow CIA agent Rae Claire Russo and Stuart Nash, a former Department of Justice prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay who agrees to marry her so they can serve as bait for the kidnappers, whose motives include justice and revenge as well as cold hard cash. So much for the imprisoned Paul’s wistful reflection that “hopefully, it was only about money.”
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9780385550543
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2026
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
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