A remote Alaskan area is the backdrop to disappearances and deaths.
Beth Rivers fled to Benedict after having been kidnapped and badly injured escaping her captor. Well-known as novelist Elizabeth Fairchild, she’s taken care to change her appearance in her new home and keep her secret from everyone but police chief Grilson Samuels. Beth runs a local newspaper and writes in secret while cautiously making new friends. When two filthy, nonverbal young girls turn up at her office, she calls Gril, who arrives with news of an unidentified frozen body. Having helped Gril before using talents she developed working with her grandfather, another police chief, Beth offers her help again. Since many residents live in far-flung cabins in the deep woods, secrets are easy to keep in Benedict, and almost everyone is hiding something. Back in the Lower 48, Beth’s police liaison, Detective Majors, has come up with shocking news about her kidnapper, restarting Beth’s traumatic flashbacks as she fights to maintain her mental equilibrium. Finding out who the little girls are turns out to be the easy part of Beth’s new investigation, which uncovers clues from the past that provide the key to countering ever more dangerous threats.
A gritty heroine fights for truth and justice in a world filled with darkness and flashes of hope and beauty.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-25-029531-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020
Did you like this book?
An actress and her entourage are kidnapped by Russians in Bohjalian’s uneven thriller.
In 1964, Hollywood’s gossip rags are agog as movie star Katie Barstow marries gallerist David Hill and takes her inner circle along on her honeymoon. And an adventuresome honeymoon it is—on safari in the Serengeti with aging big-game hunter Charlie Patton, who once helped Hemingway bag trophies. But Katie is not the star of this ensemble piece. The populous cast—a who’s who at the beginning is indispensable—includes Katie’s publicist, Reggie Stout; her agent, Peter Merrick; her best friend, Carmen Tedesco, a supporting actress who plays wisecracking sidekicks; and Terrance Dutton, Katie's recent co-star, a Black actor who's challenging Sidney Poitier's singularity in Hollywood. With obvious nods to Hemingway’s worst fear—masculine cowardice—Bohjalian adds in Felix Demeter, Carmen’s husband, a B-list screenwriter who reminds his wife of Hemingway’s weakling Francis Macomber. Felix seems a superfluous double of David, who feels inadequate because Katie is the breadwinner and his father is CIA. Then there’s Katie’s older brother, Billy Stepanov, whose abuse at the hands of their mother shaped the psychologist he is today; Billy’s pregnant wife, Margie; and Benjamin Kikwete, an apprentice safari guide. Thus, a proliferation of voices whose competing perspectives fragment rather than advance the story. The kidnapping plot seems less designed to test each character’s mettle than to exercise Bohjalian’s predilection for minute descriptions of gore. The most heartfelt portrayal here is of the Serengeti and its flora and fauna, but none of the human characters net enough face time to transcend their typecasting. The motives behind the kidnapping might have lent intrigue to the proceedings, but foreshadowing is so slight that the infodump explainer at the end leaves us shocked, mostly at how haphazard the plot is.
Perhaps A-list screenwriters will be able to spin TV gold from this sketchy treatment.Pub Date: May 10, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-385-54482-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2022
Did you like this book?
A domestic-terrorist plot gives the adopted daughter of storied U.S. Marshal Lucas Davenport her moment to shine.
Veteran oilman Vermilion Wright knows that losing a few thousand gallons of crude is no more than an accounting error to his company but could mean serious money to whomever’s found a way to siphon it off from wells in Texas’ Permian Basin. So he asks Sen. Christopher Colles, Chair of Homeland Security and Government Affairs, to look into it, and Colles persuades 24-year-old Letty Davenport, who’s just quit his employ, to return and partner with Department of Homeland Security agent John Kaiser to track down the thieves. The plot that right-winger Jane Jael Hawkes and her confederates, most of them service veterans with disgruntled attitudes and excellent military skills, have hatched is more dire than anything Wright could have imagined. They plan to use the proceeds from the oil thefts to purchase some black-market C4 essential to a major act of terrorism that will simultaneously express their alarm about the country’s hospitality to illegal immigrants and put the Jael-Birds on the map for good. But they haven’t reckoned with Letty, another kid born on the wrong side of the tracks who can outshoot the men she’s paired with and outthink the vigilantes she finds herself facing—and who, along with her adoptive father, makes a memorable pair of “pragmatists. Really harsh pragmatists” willing to do whatever needs doing without batting an eye or losing a night’s sleep afterward.
Generations may succeed generations, but Sandford’s patented investigation/action formula hasn’t aged a whit. Bring it on.Pub Date: April 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-32868-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2022
Did you like this book?
© Copyright 2022 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
