An entertaining thriller with plenty of intrigue and fast-paced, collaborative action.
In this novel, two criminal masterminds play a long game of retribution against their enemies— and three spies are the only ones standing in their way.
Raymond Charles Brickman III and Kathy Ann Erickson, aka Viktoriya Ratimirovna Popova, have prepared all their lives to enact revenge against those who have wronged them. Brickman, a self-proclaimed proud Southerner and Confederate, has a bone of contention with the United States, specifically against the North and those who oppressed Southerners and destroyed their fortunes following the Civil War. Erickson plans to retaliate against the Russian government, which is responsible for the death of her beloved family years ago in Afghanistan. Coincidentally, their separate plans come to fruition at the same time in March 2018. Brickman sets up the catastrophic destruction of critical U.S. weather satellites, and Erickson hacks into the direct line of communication between Russian President Vladimir Putin and American President Donald Trump, starting a chain of events that she expects will lead to an all-out nuclear war. The two governments’ secret services scramble for a response. That’s when Russian spy Dmitri Smirnov’s serendipitous visit to the U.S. proves a bonus when he meets his two friends Linda Kipling and Victor Silverstein, two scientists with the Naval Research Laboratory who happen to be CIA agents. These allies may find the only way to prevent World War III. Tag’s spy thriller offers a swiftly paced, tautly plotted series of episodes that encompass topical U.S. and Russian politics (including America’s growing number of domestic terrorists), diplomatic entanglements, and the cooperative work behind the scenes to keep peace in the world. The dynamics among Smirnov, Kipling, and Silverstein are engaging, and each character brings different specialties to the fight to save the world. The plot-driven narrative features adequate prose that’s focused on telling rather than showing. But despite this flawed approach and an overly enthusiastic use of exclamation marks (“No amount of planning or foresight can take the place of pure dumb luck!”), the tale smoothly sails to its climax. Fans of spy novels will greatly enjoy this story.
An entertaining thriller with plenty of intrigue and fast-paced, collaborative action.Pub Date: June 15, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-66322-254-1
Page Count: 398
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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Squeamish readers will find this isn’t their cup of tea.
Dexter meets Killing Eve in Wallace’s dark comic thriller debut.
While accepting condolences following her father’s funeral, 30-something narrator Claire receives an email saying that one of her paintings is a finalist for a prize. But her joy is short-circuited the next morning when she learns in a second apologetic note that the initial email had been sent to the wrong Claire. The sender, Lucas Kane, is “terribly, terribly sorry” for his mistake. Claire, torn between her anger and suicidal thoughts, has doubts about his sincerity and stalks him to a London pub, where his fate is sealed: “I stare at Lucas Kane in real life, and within moments I know. He doesn’t look sorry.” She dispatches and buries Lucas in her back garden, but this crime does not go unnoticed. Proud of her meticulous standards as a serial killer, Claire wonders if her grief for her father is making her reckless as she seeks to identify the blackmailer among the members of her weekly bereavement support group. The female serial killer as antihero is a growing subgenre (see Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer, 2018), and Wallace’s sociopathic protagonist is a mordantly amusing addition; the tool she uses to interact with ordinary people while hiding her homicidal nature is especially sardonic: “Whenever I’m unsure of how I’m expected to respond, I use a cliché. Even if I’m not sure what it means, even if I use it incorrectly, no one ever seems to mind.” The well-written storyline tackles some tough subjects—dementia, elder abuse, and parental cruelty—but the convoluted plot starts to drag at the halfway point. Given the lack of empathy in Claire’s narration, most of the characters come across as not very likable, and the reader tires of her sneering contempt.
Squeamish readers will find this isn’t their cup of tea.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780143136170
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
Small-town claustrophobia and intimacies alike propel this twist-filled psychological thriller.
The loss of her police officer father and the discovery of an abandoned car in a local lake raise chilling questions regarding a young woman’s family history.
When Hazel Sharp returns to her hometown of Mirror Lake, North Carolina, for her father’s memorial, she and the other townspeople are confronted by a challenging double whammy: As they’re grieving the loss of beloved longtime police officer Detective Perry Holt, a disturbing sight appears in the lake, whose waterline is receding because of an ongoing drought—an old, unidentifiable car, which has likely been lurking there for years. Hazel temporarily leaves her Charlotte-based building-renovation business in the capable hands of her partners and reconnects with her brothers, Caden and Gage; her Uncle Roy; her old fling and neighbor, Nico; and her schoolfriend, Jamie, now a mother and married to Caden. Tiny, relentless suspicions rise to the metaphorical surface along with that waterlogged vehicle: There have been a slew of minor break-ins; two people go missing; and then, a second abandoned car is discovered. The novel digs deeper into Hazel’s family history—her father was a widow when he married Hazel’s mother, who later left the family, absconding with money and jewels—and Miranda, a consummate professional when it comes to exposing the small community tensions that naturally arise when people live in close proximity for generations, exposes revelation after twisty revelation: “Everything mattered disproportionately in a small town. Your success, but also your failure. Everyone knows might as well have been our town motto.”
Small-town claustrophobia and intimacies alike propel this twist-filled psychological thriller.Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781668010440
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Marysue Rucci Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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