The gripping conclusion to a spy series piloted by a relatable, enjoyable hero.
The intense, riveting final installment of Croft’s (Operation Saladin, 2013, etc.) Mideast trilogy.
MI6 agent and former journalist Michael Vaux is once more brought back into the fray in Croft’s latest suspenseful, dramatic thriller. Happily housesitting for an ex-lover and relieved to be retired from the danger and strain of espionage, Vaux is dismayed to hear that his services are needed yet again. MI6, a subgroup of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, has begun a new operation, reluctantly choosing Sebastian Micklethwait, their newest man, to lead the project, despite his inexperience. As a cautionary measure, MI6 decides to lure successful and savvy Vaux back into the game as a sort of chaperone for Micklethwait. The risky operation, involving the defection of a high-ranking al-Qaida operative and the promise of priceless information handed to MI6, grows more complicated and dangerous when the liaison between the official and MI6 is found brutally murdered. Vaux rejoins the murky, tense world of chasing shadows and hunting terrorists and soon discovers that this current operation is far more threatening than the ones he has taken on before. He’s forced to outsmart a competing CIA agent as well as the underground of the Muslim Maghreb; meanwhile, Micklethwait is kidnapped, raising the stakes even more. Will Vaux be able to keep apace of the agents and double agents who conspire to derail his mission? Clashes of culture, faith and motive escalate as lives are put at risk and no one proves trustworthy. Woven with historical fact and modern conflict, Vaux’s triumphant return for one last nail-biting mission proves to be a rewarding and satisfying end to this trilogy. Readers who appreciated the rumpled and unlikely hero before will celebrate his latest success and the deftness with which he bests his enemies. In fast-paced, straightforward prose, the substantive tale weaves together tension, romance and humor as Vaux once more emerges as a likable, admirable hero who carries a complicated plot with aplomb.
The gripping conclusion to a spy series piloted by a relatable, enjoyable hero.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-1500823320
Page Count: 276
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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