A fast-paced investigation, full of mystery and suspense.
In Holcroft’s debut thriller, a lawyer looks into the murder of his client, a witness who may have spotted an unidentified accomplice in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
In 2011, Dallas attorney Mike Marchetti has only known his newest client, Robert Baker, an agent for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, for a few hours before Baker turns up dead, killed in an alleged robbery. It turns out that the agent had a plan for this eventuality, though, leaving Marchetti money to investigate his death. It seems that he was one of 10 people who claimed to have seen an unknown man with Timothy McVeigh more than 15 years earlier, right before the infamous bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. Not only has the FBI failed to locate the mysterious accomplice, but with Baker gone, the original 10 witnesses are now down to four—the others also died in dubious circumstances, including two in separate drive-by shootings. Marchetti and his private-investigator pal Tom Shannon see potential links between McVeigh and various groups, including terrorists and white supremacists. They also suspect a “high-level cover-up,” speculating, among other things, that the explosives at the Murrah Building were considerably more than just a truck bomb. A break-in at his office makes Marchetti believe that his investigation has made him a target himself. This is all but confirmed after two separate attempts on his life. Hopefully, he can stop whoever’s after him before they hurt someone he loves—such as his 10-year-old son, Scott. Holcroft’s taut narrative starts the core mystery off on the very first page, and quickly piles on the suspects and conspiracy theories. The protagonist, meanwhile, has a personal investment in the tale, having lost his younger sister during the 9/11 attacks, and he faces myriad obstacles along the way—including Baker’s daughter, Sheri Baker, whose lawyer demands that Marchetti return the posthumous $20,000 retainer. Instances from the villains’ perspectives primarily highlight specific dangers to Marchetti, but the overall sense of menace gives the story a relentless edge, as if anyone could attack at any time. The ending is both realistic and terrifying: Marchetti does get answers, but only some—and a further threat could very well still exist.
A fast-paced investigation, full of mystery and suspense.Pub Date: Nov. 26, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4802-8963-5
Page Count: 424
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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