A slow-going but absorbing spy tale with a vibrant setting and characters.
In this alternate-history thriller, an unknown organization threatens the British Empire by stealing and ransoming its atomic bombs.
It’s 2006, and the British Empire has a monopoly on nuclear weaponry. Other countries are working at developing similar devices, but the empire’s biggest threat is more immediate. Someone has stolen five British atomic bombs and sent King James V a ransom note. The letter demands 10 billion pounds and claims that any effort to recover the bombs will result in detonations on British soil. It’s signed by “Raptor,” which British authorities assume is a terrorist group. The Imperial Secret Service calls on agent Mick Doyle for assistance. Unfortunately, Raptor is already targeting Doyle and other ISS agents for assassination. These attempts ultimately generate a lead—specifically, a link to a German-owned gold mine on Lihir Island, off the British territory of Papua New Guinea. Doyle and new field agent Alexandra McCall make their way to the isle, which has its share of natural dangers, including sharks and crocodiles. Although the ISS suspects mining director and German national Gustave Jäger of terrorist involvement, there’s a possibility that the Chinese government is in on it as well. Doyle, McCall, and a few allies strive to identify Raptor and/or locate the bombs before the ransom deadline. Dalzell’s (co-author: The Friends of Eddy Relish, 2019, etc.) thriller proceeds at a decidedly unhurried pace. For example, Doyle has encounters with Lihir Island’s crocodiles before he even gets to the gold mine, which essentially sidelines the primary mission. On the plus side, the slower clip allows readers to spend more time with the lively characters. Island local Nellie, for example, who helps nurse a wounded Doyle, also knows Morse code and proves to be formidable in combat. Likewise, the inevitable romance between Doyle and McCall isn’t merely window dressing, as Doyle, who’s in his mid-40s, contemplates giving up singlehood. The final act steps up the action, leading to an ending that hints at a potential sequel.
A slow-going but absorbing spy tale with a vibrant setting and characters.Pub Date: April 18, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-72830-869-2
Page Count: 364
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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