Star-crossed lovers and warring gangs: Methinks the Bard would love it.
Romeo and Juliet meet the Russian Mafia in this bloody saga.
Mikhail Gorbachev resigns, and the Soviet Union becomes the Commonwealth of Independent States. But with communism suddenly gone, capitalism faces enormous hurdles. Anyone trying to start a new business must pay criminals for a roof, or, in Western parlance, for protection. Two major gangs vie for control of the Moscow turf. Timur the Lame, a veteran of Strict Regime Corrective Labor Colony No. 40, is said to descend from Tamerlane. But the “Israelite pakhan Naum Caplan is the new boy in town.” Pakhan is the honorific given the senior vor, or thief. Timur’s gang happens to hate Jews—international Jewish conspiracy, yadda yadda—but they would probably kill each other over the lucrative turf anyway. Roman Timurovich Monsurov, Timur’s son, is attracted to Yulia, Caplan’s daughter. The pull is mutual and mostly physical, though it could develop into love if they were given a chance. A suspicious Timur warns, “Beware of tying knots with Jewesses, my darling son.” But then one of Timur’s thugs shoots one of Caplan’s thugs in the knee, Caplan decides to repay the offense with interest, and a war is on. Meanwhile, Osip Axelrod is chief of the Organized Crime Control Department, and his boss wants him to deliver Timur’s scalp on a platter. Literally. “Help them kill each other off when you can!” boss man says; “What Mother Russia needs to become great again…is more funerals.” Romeo and Juliet—sorry, Roman and Yulia—decide to escape all the mayhem if they possibly can. The Shakespearean plot would be clear even if the lovers’ names had been Boris and Galina, but the author lays it on thick with several references to Willy Shake Shaft. Duh, hit me over the head again, Mr. Littell! That said, the author illuminates the turbulence in post-communist Russian society, a perfect venue for a crime yarn.
Star-crossed lovers and warring gangs: Methinks the Bard would love it.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9798212227711
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Blackstone
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.
What hasn’t legendary legal eagle Grisham tried yet? How about a thriller about serial kidnapping and international terrorism.
When Paul and Chelsea Tanner disappear during a day trip on their Paris honeymoon, their abductors demand a ransom of $2 million from Chelsea’s wealthy parents, and a few days later the same sum from Paul’s much less well-heeled parents. After orthopedist Lowell Clayburn, Chelsea’s father, ponies up the ransom without breathing a word to the authorities, his daughter is promptly released. But even though Paul’s parents sell their home, liquidate their assets, and borrow money from the Clayburns to meet the kidnappers’ demands, the villains hold on to Paul anyway. Asked whether he’s ever seen such an outcome in a double kidnapping, FBI deputy director Andrew Strong tells Lowell: “No, this is a new one.” But it’s not, as Strong knows all too well; it’s the third such active case, all involving honeymooning couples whose bridegrooms had served in the armed forces. After masterfully drawing readers in with his bare-knuckle account of the Tanners’ abduction and the attempt by their families and the CIA to tell the lies required to keep caring friends and the rapacious press at bay, Grisham effortlessly switches gears to follow CIA agent Rae Claire Russo and Stuart Nash, a former Department of Justice prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay who agrees to marry her so they can serve as bait for the kidnappers, whose motives include justice and revenge as well as cold hard cash. So much for the imprisoned Paul’s wistful reflection that “hopefully, it was only about money.”
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9780385550543
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2026
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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