A fast-paced espionage thriller that’s undermined by a lack of freshness.
A clandestine alliance, dedicated to preserving Christianity from communism and fascism, undertakes a dangerous covert mission in Stalin’s Russia in Keating’s historical thriller.
In 1928, shortly before Moscow’s St. Michael’s Lutheran Church is to be demolished by Soviet authorities, Pastor Gabriel Fischer finds a remarkable religious relic: the first translation of the Bible into Russian, accomplished by theologian Johann Ernst Glück. He quickly transports the work to the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, where it is to be hidden, and then he’s summarily executed in a planned hitalong with his friend Eckhart Konig. Meanwhile, a priest and a Lutheran pastor—Patrick O’Riley and Eric Meyer—intervene heroically during an assassination attempt on another man of the cloth, John Rose, during a symposium at Georgetown University. The assassins turn out to be agents sent by Stalin. O’Riley and Meyer’s exploits impress the Alliance of Saint Michael, a secretive organization, both for their quick action in the face of danger and for their profound appreciation of the threat communism and fascism pose to Christian civilization. The pair accept an invitation to join the group and are tasked with recovering Glück’s Bible before the cathedral is destroyed. Keating’s book is vigorously paced overall; there’s no deficit of action or intrigue in these pages. However, the book as a whole feels rather stale, and readers likely won’t be able to escape the sense that they have read a book very much like this one before. The secret society at the heart of the novel, in particular, is formulaic stuff that readers of the cloak-and-dagger genre will certainly be familiar with. Moreover, the prose is similarly unspectacular—clumsy and earnest, with a tendency toward melodrama: “The communists had made clear that religion and the Church were enemies of the State, and destined for annihilation.”
A fast-paced espionage thriller that’s undermined by a lack of freshness.Pub Date: May 5, 2022
ISBN: 979-8818739762
Page Count: 382
Publisher: Independently Published
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.
Who was Shakespeare?
Move over, Earl of Oxford and Francis Bacon: There’s another contender for the true author of plays attributed to the bard of Stratford—Emilia Bassano, a clever, outspoken, educated woman who takes center stage in Picoult’s spirited novel. Of Italian heritage, from a family of court musicians, Emilia was a hidden Jew and the courtesan of a much older nobleman who vetted plays to be performed for Queen Elizabeth. She was well traveled—unlike Shakespeare, she visited Italy and Denmark, where, Picoult imagines, she may have met Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—and was familiar with court intrigue and English law. “Every gap in Shakespeare’s life or knowledge that has had to be explained away by scholars, she somehow fills,” Picoult writes. Encouraged by her lover, Emilia wrote plays and poetry, but 16th-century England was not ready for a female writer. Picoult interweaves Emilia’s story with that of her descendant Melina Green, an aspiring playwright, who encounters the same sexist barriers to making herself heard that Emilia faced. In alternating chapters, Picoult follows Melina’s frustrated efforts to get a play produced—a play about Emilia, who Melina is certain sold her work to Shakespeare. Melina’s play, By Any Other Name, “wasn’t meant to be a fiction; it was meant to be the resurrection of an erasure.” Picoult creates a richly detailed portrait of daily life in Elizabethan England, from sumptuous castles to seedy hovels. Melina’s story is less vivid: Where Emilia found support from the witty Christopher Marlowe, Melina has a fashion-loving gay roommate; where Emilia faces the ravages of repeated outbreaks of plague, for Melina, Covid-19 occurs largely offstage; where Emilia has a passionate affair with the adoring Earl of Southampton, Melina’s lover is an awkward New York Times theater critic. It’s Emilia’s story, and Picoult lovingly brings her to life.
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780593497210
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
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