A wry and fast-paced spy thriller unfolding in the shadow of the Hagia Sophia.
In Keech’s spy novel, an unlikely Russian emissary gets caught up in espionage.
Thirty-year-old Alexey Mikhailov travels from Nidgye, a small village near the Georgian border, at the behest of his mother, who wants him to visit the reliquary of Russia’s revered Saint Sergey at a monastery a few dozen miles outside of Moscow and plead for the saint’s intercession in Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine (Alexey’s father is indifferent, being an “old Soviet atheist holdover”). Specifically, the reliquary is for the 14th-century saint’s head; the priests serving there have recently been disturbed by online claims stating that their relic is fake and that the actual head of Saint Sergey currently resides in the Orthodox church of Ioann Russkiy, Saint John the Russian, in Istanbul. The clerics ask Alexey to disguise himself as a priest and go to Istanbul to investigate—as he’s eager to avoid the draft, Alexey quickly agrees. He travels to Istanbul, meeting a wealthy young man named Ivan (who will come back into his life in an unexpected way later in the story) as well as Angela Walker, a CIA operative under a cloud from a previous screw-up who’s been sent to Istanbul with U.S. Defense Clandestine Services Col. Michael Flint in order to intercept a mysterious Russian asset bearing an even more mysterious device. Angela and Alexey take a strong liking to each other, but everything is complicated by the pompous colonel. Keech stirs all of these elements into an utterly delightful mixture of high-stakes spy-drama and droll satire of high-stakes spy-drama. Alexey is a perfect hapless everyman whom readers will instinctively root for, delighting in the hijinks and scrapes he gets into in his quest to bring the saint’s head back to Russia. The double ending the author arranges is both heartwarming and appropriately cynical. Espionage fans will find much here to love.
A wry and fast-paced spy thriller unfolding in the shadow of the Hagia Sophia.Pub Date: April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9798988503460
Page Count: 270
Publisher: Real Nice Books
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: yesterday
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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