Thickets of tricky conspiracies, swamps full of secret agendas: Reader, you’re in le Carré-land, guided there unerringly by...
In Steinhauer’s superb spy novel, Milo Weaver (The Nearest Exit, 2010, etc.), in from the cold, wants to stay that way, but no one will let him.
Some say he was born to be a spy. Others don’t say anything at all about him, because the fact is Milo Weaver—maximally understated, eminently ignorable—is cellophane. Those who know spy-craft best see virtue in this of course, and he’s recruited for the Tourists, an elite, extremely secret branch of the CIA. In time, Milo becomes remarkable, a great American spy. And then the unthinkable happens. Before one can say clandestine, the Tourists are converted to history—33 of them, virtually the entire department, wiped out at the command of the wicked and wily Xin Zhu, a spymaster highly placed in the Guoanbu, the intelligence arm of the People’s Republic of China. Milo survives, but is suddenly jobless. In from the cold by accident as it were, he finds himself basking in familial warmth: beautiful, loving wife, adorable six year old daughter. As seldom before, in a way he never expected to be, Milo’s content. Not so for Alan Drummond, his boss. Rabid for vengeance, Drummond wants the aid and all-out support of his ace agent and will do anything to get it. As it happens, Xin Zhu is also interested in the talented Mr. Weaver and will do anything to turn him. And so begins a geopolitical game of chess—with Milo a pawn, destined, soon, to be half-forgotten—between a pair of opponents consumed by mutual detestation. But in chess, as in life, if certain pawns are half-forgotten they can become powerful enough to change the game.
Thickets of tricky conspiracies, swamps full of secret agendas: Reader, you’re in le Carré-land, guided there unerringly by one of the best of the newer crop.Pub Date: March 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-62289-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2012
Albeit slightly drawn out as it rolls to its conclusion, Koontz’s novel cuts between the fantastical and the believable to...
Koontz (The City, 2014, etc.) searches the shadow lands of Elsewhere, a mystical terrain where Bibi Blair confronts a rare brain cancer.
Bibi resides in Newport Beach, California, but her life’s love, SEAL team leader Paxton Thorpe, is half a world away. Bibi is an accomplished author, with one novel published, when an off-kilter morning sends her to the ER. Diagnosis: gliamatosis cerebi, fatal within months. Bibi responds, "We’ll see." That night, she has a seizure. Waking, she intuits that she’s spontaneously cured, but when she returns home she finds herself confronted by a mystic’s divination: Bibi must pay for her cure by saving the life of a mysterious Ashley Bell. Bibi, "finding it easier to accept unreason than to resist it," takes on the quest with the merest of clues, soon becoming the target of the "Wrong People" and discovering "such bitter and implacable rancor that mere hatred paled before it." Pax, on an overseas mission, begins receiving powerful telepathic messages from Bibi. She pleads for him to find her. The two narratives converge only to turn and circle back as Bibi begins "sliding down a chute, accelerating, into an abyss." Koontz crafts a story shifting between reality and imagination, highlighted by distinct descriptions—"eyes as dark and liquid as beads of motor oil." Bibi’s a believable protagonist surrounded by interesting bit players like her retired Marine grandfather, the Captain; Solange St. Croix, a paranoid and pretentious professor; and a Holocaust survivor who wrote novels about "valiant girls" that inspired Bibi. Koontz’s setting, with California coastal fog a metaphor for illness and for knowledge beyond understanding, makes real the often surrealistic narrative.
Albeit slightly drawn out as it rolls to its conclusion, Koontz’s novel cuts between the fantastical and the believable to dissect evil, explore the power of imagination, and probe the parameters of consciousness.Pub Date: Dec. 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-345-54596-1
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A vivid setting and a devious, deadly plot, though the first is a bit overdone and the second contains a few...
In 1956, a pair of college roommates meets again in Tangier, with terrifying results.
“At first, I had told myself that Tangier wouldn’t be so terrible,” says Alice Shipley, a young wife dragged there by her unpleasant husband, John McAllister, who has married her for her money. He vanishes every day into the city, which he adores, while Alice is afraid to go out at all, having once gotten lost in the flea market. Then Lucy Mason, her one-time best friend and roommate at Bennington College, shows up unannounced on her doorstep. “I had never, not once in the many moments that had occurred between the Green Mountains of Vermont and the dusty alleyways of Morocco, expected to see her again.” Alice and Lucy did not part on good terms; there are repeated references to a horrible accident which will remain mysterious for some time. What is clear is that Lucy is romantically obsessed with Alice and that Alice is afraid of her. In chapters that alternate between the two women’s points of view, the past and the present unfold. The two young women bonded quickly at Bennington: though Alice is a wealthy, delicate Brit and Lucy a rough-edged local on scholarship, both are orphans. Or at least Lucy says she is—from the start, there are inconsistencies in her story that put Alice in doubt. And while Alice is so frightened of Tangier that she can’t leave the house, Lucy feels right at home: she finds the maze of souks electrifying, and she quickly learns to enjoy the local custom of drinking scalding hot mint tea in the heat. She makes a friend, a shady local named Joseph, and immediately begins lying to him, introducing herself as Alice Shipley. Something evil this way comes, for sure. Mangan’s debut pays homage to The Talented Mr. Ripley and to the work of Daphne du Maurier and Shirley Jackson.
A vivid setting and a devious, deadly plot, though the first is a bit overdone and the second contains a few head-scratchers, including the evil-lesbian trope. Film rights have already been sold; it will make a good movie.Pub Date: March 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-268666-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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