A superior thriller with real-world chaos and well-credentialed heroes that will engage fans of the genre.
Uranium stolen in 1994 is used in a present-day attack on a United States Navy command ship with a threat of more to come in DeGrandpre’s thriller.
“Me?…I’m just an interpreter,” proclaims young CIA officer Bill Estes. Right, and Jack Ryan was just an analyst in Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October. Based on his smarts and resourcefulness in this techno-thriller, Bill Estes, too, may have a franchise in his future. Estes, “a natural for the intelligence service,” is just 18 months into his employment with the CIA when he receives his first field mission to Kazakhstan. With no authority to make anything happen, he is promised that the mission will be “neither terribly exciting nor demanding.” Wrong on both counts: A nuclear device destroys a Navy command ship, wipes out a fishing village, and disrupts communications and electronics. Is this a test device? Estes believes so, and together with FBI Special Agent Michelle Marsh he pursues whoever stole the uranium used in the attack. The plan is simple, Estes tells Marsh: “Relentless pursuit.” The pursuit leads them to Konstantin Pavlovich, who is obsessed with nuclear gadgetry, and to mercenary and arms dealer Grigori Kirill, who, as he demonstrates with ruthless efficiency, is not someone to be messed with. DeGrandpre brings a sense of authenticity to this propulsive global thriller that spans decades and features far-flung locations from Tennessee to Russia. Understatement serves the author well, heightening the suspense and menace: “Kon never learned exactly what Yuri had done to upset Kirill; all he knew was that the man must have done something, because one day, some ex-Soviet KGB henchmen showed up in a military 4x4 and shot Yuri pointblank for trespassing.” Chapter headings undermine the story’s momentum, but the characters, major and minor, are strongly defined, and an effective open ending sets the stage for an anticipated second mission.
A superior thriller with real-world chaos and well-credentialed heroes that will engage fans of the genre.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2024
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 321
Publisher: Sad Story Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
