Clunky prose swaddles a frantic but unexceptional plot.
The search for a hidden treasure that will be either a blessing or a curse for the state of Israel reopens wounds from the Holocaust and threatens to worsen the state of Arab-Israeli relations, if such a thing is possible.
This latest entry in the blast from the mysterious biblical past sweepstakes begins with the Roman destruction of the Jewish Temple in AD 70 and the last minute spiriting away of the Temple’s greatest but mysterious and unrevealed treasure. After a side trip to the Austrian Alps as the Reich is collapsing, where SS troopers are hiding a Large Heavy Box with Unrevealed Contents in a remote salt mine (could there be a connection with the Temple Treasure?), Sussman (The Lost Army of Cambyses, 2003) sets the reader down in today’s wretched Middle East for what seem to be unrelated stories in Jerusalem and Cairo, plot lines that will converge and lead—yes—to the Treasure. In Egypt, Inspector Yusuf Khalifa, an honest, hardworking detective with a strong background in archaeology who is nearly the only likable character to be introduced, takes on the case of apparently murdered Dutchman Piet Jansen. Khalifa quickly learns that Jansen was not murdered but was quite possibly the culprit 15 years earlier in Khalifa’s first case as a policeman. Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, attractive but ruthless Palestinian reporter Layla al-Madani has received an anonymous letter containing a sheet of medieval code that promises to put her in touch with al-Mulatham, a renegade Palestinian firebrand. While Layla follows the code to Cambridge and Languedoc (the tragic heretical Cathars pop up briefly), heartbroken Israeli police detective Arieh Ben-Roi (a suicide bomber showed up at his wedding) nurses his rage against Palestinians, chugs vodka and follows his gut until he gets the phone call from Egypt that will start tying all the plot lines together.
Clunky prose swaddles a frantic but unexceptional plot.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-87113-972-6
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Consistent suspense stumbles only in the final confrontation. Seasoned, older crime-fighter Quincy is wooden, Connor...
Gardner debuts in hardcover with a cool and mostly accomplished psychokiller tale, again following the adventures of FBI agent Pierce Quincy and private-eye Lorraine “Rainie” Connor.
Having just set herself up as a p.i. in Portland, Oregon, former cop Connor is wondering how she'll pay her bills when Quincy knocks on her door. The pair shared previous adventures, and now Quincy wants to hire Connor to reinvestigate what seems to have been the accidental death of his daughter Amanda: a reformed alcoholic who supposedly fell off the wagon, ran over a pedestrian, and then drove her Ford Explorer into a tree in Virginia. But her father thinks the death may have been arranged. Just as Connor is uncovering some clues, Quincy's ex-wife Bethie meets a handsome stranger in Philadelphia and is horribly murdered. It doesn't take long for Quincy (whose unlisted phone number is mysteriously accessible to many of the felons he's locked up) to figure out that someone from his past is out to get him and his family. The action shifts to New York, where Quincy's other daughter, Kimberly, is studying criminology and seeing a psychiatrist to try to make sense of her sister's and mother's deaths. Quincy is almost paralyzed with guilt: his zealous attention to FBI duties ruined his marriage and might have caused Amanda’s alcoholism. He and Connor believe that the psychokiller, who is a master of disguise, adept at forgery, and unusually knowledgeable about FBI procedures (could it be a jealous fellow agent Quincy inadvertently humiliated long ago?), will go after Kimberly next. Then a phone call reveals that Quincy’s father has been kidnapped from his nursing home by someone masquerading as Quincy.
Consistent suspense stumbles only in the final confrontation. Seasoned, older crime-fighter Quincy is wooden, Connor delightfully brash and spunky.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2001
ISBN: 0-553-80238-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2001
An exhilarating tale delivered with the pace of a thriller and the wisdom of a grizzled nature guide.
Two college friends’ leisurely river trek becomes an ordeal of fire and human malice.
For his fourth novel, Heller swaps the post-apocalyptic setting of his previous book, The Dog Stars (2012), for present-day realism—in this case a river in northern Canada where Dartmouth classmates Jack and Wynn have cleared a few weeks for fly-fishing and whitewater canoeing. Jack is the sharp-elbowed scion of a Colorado ranch family, while Wynn is a more easygoing Vermonter—a divide that becomes more stark as the novel progresses—but they share a love of books and the outdoors. They’re so in sync early on that they agree to lose travel time to turn back and warn a couple they’d overheard arguing that a forest fire is fast approaching. It’s a fateful decision: They discover the woman, Maia, near death and badly injured, apparently by her homicidal husband, Pierre. When Wynn unthinkingly radios Pierre that she’s been found alive, Wynn and Jack realize they’re now targets as well. Heller confidently manages a host of tensions—Jack and Wynn becoming suspicious of each other while watching for Pierre, straining to keep Maia alive, and paddling upriver to reach civilization and escape the nearing blaze. And his pacing is masterful as well, briskly but calmly capturing the scenery in slower moments, then running full-throttle and shifting to barreling prose when danger is imminent. (The fire sounds like “turbines and the sudden shear of a strafing plane, a thousand thumping hooves in cavalcade, the clamor and thud of shields clashing, the swelling applause of multitudes….”) And though the tale is a familiar one of fending off the deadliness of the wilderness and one's fellow man, Heller has such a solid grasp of nature (both human and the outdoors) that the storytelling feels fresh and affecting. In bringing his characters to the brink of death (and past it), Heller speaks soberly to the random perils of everyday living.
An exhilarating tale delivered with the pace of a thriller and the wisdom of a grizzled nature guide.Pub Date: March 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-52187-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2019
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