Dramatic history presented in vivid detail.
A World War II Navy captain looks for signs of a Japanese atomic bomb program.
In March 1945, Germany has given up, but the war in the Pacific is far from over. Captain Wolfe Bowen is ordered to check out a surrendered German U-boat that had two Japanese passengers aboard and find out what they’d been doing in the North Atlantic. The sub is a strange one, having a second deck but no torpedo tubes. In that extra deck is uranium that the German captain will not show Bowen even at gunpoint. Strahlung, the German explains. Radiation. Bowen reports this to his superiors, who clue him in about our Manhattan Project, which is so secret that FDR (who dies within weeks) even keeps it from Vice President Truman. Bowen also learns that the Nazis had been trying to develop an atomic bomb, so is Germany sharing its technology with Japan? That is for Bowen to find out as he travels by submarine through dangerous Japanese waters. Indeed, as U.S. brass had never expected, he witnesses spectacular evidence of the enemy’s nuclear efforts. This news must immediately get to the suddenly President Truman. What if an atomic bomb explodes on our invading troops? In this fictional telling, such a prospect drives Truman to drop U.S. bombs first. Bowen works closely with Lieutenant Commander Janet Waring, who knows Japanese culture and language. They get along quite well—he’s a big fellow who pumps iron to relieve his stress, then learns that she is happy to relieve his stress in bed. After the bombs, President Truman directs the duo to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki and report back to him how bad it really was. And how did ordinary people feel about the American victors—was it rage or resignation? What “the Japanese were calling the second sun had bloomed in the early morning sky over Hiroshima” and left human shadows burned into sidewalks. Survivors looked like the living dead. All colors disappeared, leaving only black and white. Bowen and Waring are exceptionally good at finding out what the big shots need to know, and readers will like them both. Whether Japan ever had its own atomic bomb program is unknown, though the author thinks they probably did.
Dramatic history presented in vivid detail.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781250360977
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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
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