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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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