An intriguing, complex hero emerges in this riveting espionage tale.
The past reaches out and grabs an ex–intelligence agent in this debut spy thriller.
Dalton Drake, a former Canadian Security Investigation Service agent–turned–private eye, is drinking after work at his favorite Winnipeg bar when a stranger delivers the message “Ice Castle is falling. Find Farhad.” He also learns that his former MI6 colleague Alexander Marshall-Page has died under suspicious circumstances. By the next morning, the messenger is also dead. Soon, Dalton gets summoned to Washington, D.C., where he is quickly assigned to Operation Blackwater, which seeks to recover nuclear material stolen by terrorists. Dalton teams up with MI5’s Kenton Stone, Royal Air Force Second Lt. Kathleen Baker, and, later, his long-lost former lover Beverley Foster. They’re chasing terrorists Layla Farhad, who Dalton thought was dead, and her lover, Hassan Taheri, who are smuggling their radioactive prize first by cargo ship and then by submarine. In the background of this dogged pursuit through Africa and Europe, scientists work with the military to develop alternate defenses in case Blackwater fails. All involved also have to determine the target of the terrorists’ nuclear missile. What results is a ton of close calls in this high-stakes global game of cat and mouse. Old bonds are revisited and new relationships form as a multinational force races to avoid Armageddon at the hands of Farhad and Taheri. Jacuzzi has successfully found a way to blend his multiple interests in travel, history, weapons systems, intelligence services, and aviation in this electrifying novel. He skillfully has set up a Dalton Drake series by creating a longtime spy and seducer who has reached a point when he’s considering settling down, if only his past will let him. By having Dalton be a private investigator in the author’s hometown of Winnipeg, Jacuzzi creates the flexibility to place him on an international stage or give him a complex local case to solve. And by leaving most of his characters alive, the author has positioned himself to pick and choose from his large cast for future volumes in the series. Based on this exhilarating series opener, he certainly knows how to pen a breakneck narrative. Here’s hoping Jacuzzi can continue to build on this promising beginning.
An intriguing, complex hero emerges in this riveting espionage tale.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2023
ISBN: 9781039160651
Page Count: 420
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: March 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A feisty storm of Greek tragedy headlined by three very modern women.
On the isle of Capri, Helen Lingate seeks revenge on the people responsible for her mother’s death 30 years earlier—her own family.
When Sarah Lingate fell to her death on Capri in 1992, she left behind a 3-year-old daughter, Helen, and a legacy as a gifted playwright; her favorite necklace of golden snakes was lost to the sea. Thirty years later, Helen, chafing at the restrictions she’s grown up under as a member of the old-money Lingate family, hatches a plan with her uncle Marcus’ assistant, Lorna Moreno, to blackmail her uncle and her father with that same necklace, which mysteriously entered her possession a few months before. The novel begins on Capri just after Lorna disappears, and then traces her steps from 36 hours earlier. Interweaving chapters from the points of view of Helen, Lorna, and Sarah—as well as, later, a few others—we learn how Sarah gradually became stifled by the constant pressure of keeping up appearances until she became inspired to write a play, Saltwater, that was a not-so-thinly veiled tell-all revealing dark Lingate family secrets. It was shortly after this that she fell to her death. The loss of her mother has come to define Helen’s life, and if she can use the necklace as leverage to escape her family, and maybe learn the truth along the way, she’ll take the risk. Lorna’s motives are both murkier and more straightforward—she’s never had money, and she’s got a chip on her shoulder about it, so splitting 10 million euros with Helen sounds like a way to discard her past and start fresh. These strong, conniving women drive the drama and the narrative, and they are captivating enough that as twist after twist begins to unfurl, the novel still feels character-driven. The end—well, the end shocks. And it’s well earned. By the time the sun sets on the gorgeous excess and rugged coast of Capri, lives will have been destroyed.
A feisty storm of Greek tragedy headlined by three very modern women.Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593875551
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
An addictive psychological thriller.
When a mysterious novel appears on her bedside table, a successful documentary filmmaker finds herself face to face with a secret that threatens to unravel life as she knows it.
Catherine Ravenscroft has built a dream life, or close to it: the devoted husband, the house in London, the award-winning career as a documentary filmmaker. And though she’s never quite bonded with her 25-year-old son the way she’d hoped, he’s doing fine—there are worse things than being an electronics salesman. But when she stumbles across a sinister novel called The Perfect Stranger—no one’s quite sure how it came into the house—Catherine sees herself in its pages, living out scenes from her past she’d hoped to forget. It’s a threat—but from whom? And why now, 20 years after the fact? Meanwhile, Stephen Brigstocke, a retired teacher, widowed and in pain, is desperate to exact revenge on Catherine and make her pay for what happened all those years ago. The story is told in alternating chapters, Catherine's in the third-person and Stephen's in the first, as the two orbit each other, predator and prey, and the novel moves between the past and the present to paint a portrait of two troubled families with trauma bubbling under the surface. As their lives become increasingly entangled, Stephen’s obsession grows, Catherine’s world crumbles, and it becomes clear that—in true thriller form—everything may not be as it seems. But how much destruction must be wrought before the truth comes out? And when it does, will there be anything left to salvage? While the long buildup to the big reveal begins to drag, Knight’s elegant plot and compelling (if not unexpected) characters keep the heart of the novel beating even when the pacing falters. Atmospheric and twisting and ripe for TV adaptation, this debut novel never strays far from convention, but that doesn’t make it any less of a page-turner.
An addictive psychological thriller.Pub Date: May 19, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236225-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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