Bids fair to be a thoroughly entertaining series. Pare the next one down some, and Grace understated will really shine.
International cop Grace Flint makes a second intriguing appearance (Flint, 2000)—but then hangs around too long.
The pace grows uncertain near the 400-page mark. Until then, though, the action’s brisk as the gritty Brit tries to cope with a variety of misfortunes both professional and personal. To begin with, there’s the undercover operation mounted by an ad hoc international task force, directed by Grace, that fails drastically enough to earn ugly headlines in the US and abroad. Aimed at big-time money-laundering, it results in the death of a federal agent as well as loss of face for Grace and her FBI boss. Someone tipped off evil financial genius Karl Grober, enabling him to elude the trap Grace & Co. had set for him—someone purporting to be an ally. But the really dismal betrayal lurks around the corner. Between novels, Grace has fallen in love. Her husband Ben Gates, dedicated birdwatcher, respected member of the Maine Audubon Society, avowedly apolitical, turns out to be a conscienceless fraud in the employ of not one but multiple foreign agencies with secret agendas and dark intent. “I married a lie,” acknowledges Grace to her mirror as she attempts to come to terms with the magnitude of her husband’s deception. But Grace deceived is Grace enraged, and that’s bad news for all the seducers and traducers impinging on her life. In the US, in England, Germany, on an island off Croatia, on a boat on the Bay of Biscay, and finally in Brazil, she hunts relentlessly for faithless Ben and murderous Grober. Nor is she ever constrained by the rules. What’s Flint’s law, a onetime colleague asks rhetorically. And, resignedly, answers: “Whatever she wants it to be.”
Bids fair to be a thoroughly entertaining series. Pare the next one down some, and Grace understated will really shine.Pub Date: July 22, 2002
ISBN: 0-399-14838-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
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.
