A smart, gritty political-conspiracy thriller.
In this finale to Lubitz’s (Beyond Top Secret, 2015, etc.) trilogy, the identities of two amnesiacs come into question as a secret group plans to unleash a powerful mind-control drug.
Bill and Cheryl Parker happily live in the secluded paradise of Hawaii’s Molokai island. Several years earlier in Colorado, a car accident left Bill in a coma and Cheryl with brain trauma, effectively shrouding their past lives in a fog. One day, an earthquake strikes the island, and the Parkers nearly die. In Washington, D.C., Beltway Insider reporter Connie Blythe sees Cheryl in disaster footage and believes that she’s a woman named Alana Shannon. More than two years earlier, Alana, a former men’s-magazine model, shot and killed her husband, a real estate magnate; she claimed self-defense, the murder charge was dropped, and she disappeared. Further research convinces Connie that Bill is actually a man named Ryan Butler. When Blythe confronts them, they deny being anyone other than the Parkers. Blythe doesn’t give up, however, as she’s sure that the pair can aid her investigation of warmongering U.S. Rep. Steven Luke of Missouri, the central figure in a plot to use a hypnosis drug to subvert the White House and manipulate the war on terror. In this swift final volume of his series, Lubitz, a former senior official at the U.S. Department of Justice, brings an insider’s perspective to his narrative, set in the immediate years after the 9/11 attacks. At one point, for example, a seasoned agent tells a younger one about President George W. Bush’s CIA: “These new guys are vicious sharks, and if you submit to their methods, they will destroy you and the agency.” Some characters will stop at nothing to achieve their goals, and the author effectively uses terse, chilling dialogue to get this across. For instance, a former KGB agent uses a fake persona to reel in a target; later, when the woman asks why she can’t speak with “Mr. Tyman,” he answers, “Because Mr. Tyman doesn’t exist.” Fans of the series, as well as newcomers, will also enjoy the protagonists’ optimism in the face of governmental corruption and global chaos.
A smart, gritty political-conspiracy thriller.Pub Date: March 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-692-85566-9
Page Count: 278
Publisher: Twist of Fate Press
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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