Otherwise: Butch and Marlene’s 14th outing (Enemy Within, 2001, etc.) is among their most straightforward, with Lucy’s...
New York City may be a jungle for chief assistant DA Butch Karp and his wife Marlene Ciampi, retired from her private-security firm to train serious guard dogs, but they find the hills of West Virginia just as violent.
Vacationing on Long Island’s North Shore, Marlene’s struck up a child-fueled friendship with Rose Wickham Heeney, who left the area as an idealistic young woman to work as an environmental activist in McCullensburg and stayed to marry firebrand union organizer Red Heeney. Marlene and Butch both note that Red’s social skills, honed by his hopeless candidacy for the union presidency, are in need of polishing, but she’s shocked to hear that Red, on his return home, has been shot to death along with Rose and their daughter Lizzie. When the local cops immediately arrest Moses Welch, a local simpleton who couldn’t possibly have masterminded the killings, Red’s son Dan, an MIT freshman who’s developed a warm friendship with Butch and Marlene’s daughter Lucy, asks Marlene to come down and help Welch’s sozzled public defender keep the client from getting railroaded. Almost before his wife’s unpacked, Butch has his own invitation from the West Virginia governor, who’s looking for an independent special prosecutor to clean out Robbens County without stirring up sentiment against the state house. Though the stage seems set for a backwoods Adam’s Rib, with Butch and Marlene swapping insults and witticisms under the conference table, legal wrangles concerning who slaughtered the Heeneys swiftly change into what look like cooperative attempts to bring the perps to justice in a county whose every public official depends on the corrupting influence of big coal. The incredible answer marks a serious compromise of Tanenbaum’s usually unerring eye for moral complexity.
Otherwise: Butch and Marlene’s 14th outing (Enemy Within, 2001, etc.) is among their most straightforward, with Lucy’s budding romance with Dan Heeney practically the only trace of the family’s normally teeming byways.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2002
ISBN: 0-7434-0344-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2002
Furiously suspenseful, but brain-dead second volume in Child’s gratuitously derivative Jack Reacher action series (Killing Floor, 1997). Reacher, a former Army Military Police Major, has now moved on to Chicago, where he gallantly assists a beautiful mystery woman hobbling on a crutch with her dry cleaning. Seconds later, Reacher and the woman, FBI agent Holly Johnson (also daughter of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as goddaughter of the President), are kidnaped by armed gunmen. Handcuffed together and tossed in the back of a van, the two are taken to the Montana mountain stronghold of Beau Borken, a fat, ugly, psychopathically vicious neo-Nazi militia leader given to sawing the arms off day laborers and making windy speeches about how he brilliant he is. Of course, the kidnappers don’t know that they have a former military police major in their clutches who, in addition to having a Silver Star for heroism, is one of the best snipers the Army has ever produced, can pull iron rings out of barn doors, and kill bad guys with lit cigarettes. Meanwhile, a team of FBI agents, at least one of whom is a mole leaking information to Borken, identify Reacher from a reconstructed photo taken from the dry cleaner’s surveillance camera. Borken, impressed with Reacher’s military record, lectures him about his brilliant plan to overthrow the US using a hijacked Army missile unit, with Holly held as a hostage in a specially constructed, dynamite-lined prison cell. Borken stupidly lets Reacher best him in a shooting match, then grandiosely turns his back on his captives enough times for Reacher and Holly to escape, cause havoc, get captured, escape, make love in the woods, cause more havoc, and get captured again, as General Johnson, FBI Director Harlan Webster, and General Garber, Reacher’s former commander, plan a covert strike on Borken’s fortress that’s certain to fail. Another Rogue Warrior meets Die Hard with all the typical over-the-top plotting, blood-splattering ultraviolence, lock-jawed heroics and the dumbest villains this side of Ruby Ridge.
Pub Date: July 20, 1998
ISBN: 0-399-14379-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1998
The moral overcomes the mystery in this sobering cautionary tale.
A hard-partying flight attendant runs afoul of Russian conspirators.
Cassandra Bowden, like her namesake, the prophetess who is never believed, has problems. A flight attendant since college, Cassie, now nearing 40, has a penchant for drinking to the blackout point and sleeping with strange men. On a flight to Dubai, while serving in first class, she flirts with hedge fund manager Alex Sokoloff, an American with Russian roots and oligarchic connections. She repairs to his hotel room, and during the drunken bacchanal that follows, Miranda, apparently a business acquaintance of Alex’s, visits with more vodka. The next morning Cassie wakes up next to Alex, who lies dead, his throat cut. She has blacked out much of the night, so although she’d grown rather fond of him, how can she be sure she didn’t kill him? Rushing back for the return flight, she decides not to disclose what happened, at least not until she's back home in New York City, where the justice system is arguably less draconian than in Dubai. At JFK, the FBI interviews the deplaning crew, and Cassie plays dumb. Unfortunately, her walk of shame through the hotel lobby was captured on security cam. Sporadically intercut with Cassie’s point of view is that of Elena, a Russian assassin for hire, who had presented herself as Miranda in Alex’s hotel room. After being thwarted by Cassie’s presence from executing Alex then, she returned to finish the job but decided not to make collateral damage of his passed-out bedmate, a bad call she must rectify per her sinister handler, Viktor. In the novel’s flabby midsection, Cassie continues to alternately binge-drink and regret the consequences as her lawyer, her union, and even the FBI struggle to protect her from herself. Although Bohjalian (The Sleepwalker, 2017, etc.) strives to render Cassie sympathetic, at times he can’t resist taking a judgmental stance toward her. As Cassie’s addiction becomes the primary focus, the intricate plotting required of an international thriller lags.
The moral overcomes the mystery in this sobering cautionary tale.Pub Date: March 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-385-54241-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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