A solid, entertaining political thriller, but readers should start with the prequel.
A mild-mannered chiropractor must solve the mystery of his brother’s disappearance and unravel a vast government conspiracy in Levine’s sequel to Eye of the Redeemer (2012).
Ray Silver, a chiropractor residing in Hawaii with his new wife and twin daughters, thought he had made peace with his past and the disappearance of his brother, Frank. However, the past soon comes back to haunt Ray, starting him on the path to discovering what really happened to Frank. Called to testify before a government committee investigating possible misconduct by CIA operatives, Ray is interrogated at length about his involvement in a CIA operation in the Philippines by Francine Manetti, a ruthlessly ambitious congresswoman fixated on the fate of Frank—and a package of politically sensitive documents in his possession. His curiosity piqued, Ray asks a young news reporter named Jenna Grant to help him investigate his brother’s disappearance and the documents Manetti is intent on retrieving. Ray and Jenna’s investigation sets off a dangerous game of cat and mouse with the congresswoman, who’s willing to stop at nothing to safeguard her political secrets. Levine deftly marshals an almost impenetrably dense plot into a tense, gripping narrative. The conspiracy uncovered by Ray has more tentacles than an octopus, and at times, readers may need a chart—like the charts used by Jenna Grant during the investigation—to keep track of all the characters and plot twists. This task is complicated by frequent references to characters and events in Levine’s previous book; however, Levine includes enough back story to provide adequate context while tying together the events in both books. Ray is an amiable hero who anchors the action and gives the narrative momentum. He’s assisted by a well-developed supporting cast of characters, including his family and the clinic’s staff. Although Francine Manetti comes across as a one-dimensional villain, a surprising twist provides a better understanding of her motivations.
A solid, entertaining political thriller, but readers should start with the prequel.Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2013
ISBN: 978-1481216746
Page Count: 412
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
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PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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