A thrilling, engrossing work of serpentine intrigue and crisp characterization with a conservationist conscience.
Murder and mystery commingle with dirty politics in Heath’s eco-thriller.
Heath, the author of Broken Angels (2015), channels his experience as a former environmental protection lobbyist at the Alaska legislature into the creation of Kit Olinsky, a single mother of one who tries to protect that state’s natural resources through her work with the Alaska Environmental Lobby. Kit finds herself in hot water after being indicted in the sudden death of a maintenance worker during an explosion at a logging site in the Tongass National Forest. The plot thickens when it appears that a conniving senator may have orchestrated the murder charge to distract Kit from meddling with a bill he supports that involves Native American land rights, which would further his political ambitions if passed. He will stop at nothing to get the bill through the legislature, including colluding with other lawmakers and attaching controversial riders to it, such as an abortion deterrent. Blackmail, threats, and coverups ensue as Kit attempts to absolve herself from the charge that she’s leading a group of outlaw eco-terrorists while at the same time trying to keep her child from being removed by the state from her care. Additionally, Kit must deal with her attraction to her former lover, “mountain man” Rinn Vaness, whose need for revenge against the perpetrators of deforestation efforts leads to acts of vandalism bordering on eco-terrorism. Vaness might be able to help her, but in order to do it, he’d have to tangle with Dan Wakefield, Kit’s friend and the CEO of the Tlikquan logging group that Rinn sabotaged only days earlier. The plot moves at a riveting pace, and fans of suspense fiction—particularly eco-thrillers—will find themselves pleasantly engaged with all the treacherous political and interpersonal machinations. Heath cleverly incorporates many contemporary hot-button issues into his narrative, such as Native Americans’ attempts to claim overdue rights and the enduring fight between woodland conservationists and political and corporate entities bent on developing precious forestland for profit. Heath certainly knows his way around controversial land management issues and parlays this knowledge into a riveting page-turner.
A thrilling, engrossing work of serpentine intrigue and crisp characterization with a conservationist conscience.Pub Date: March 30, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63393-888-5
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Koehler Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
An unmissable thriller.
For every child kidnapped, another must be taken. Otherwise The Chain will be broken.
Thirteen-year-old Kylie is waiting for the school bus on Plum Island, Massachusetts, when a man and a woman pull up wearing ski masks. Her brain tells her to run, but she doesn’t make the correct split-second decision, and she is taken at gunpoint. Her mother, Rachel, then receives a call that she is now part of The Chain. She must pay a ransom and kidnap another family’s child, and then that family must do the same for her daughter to be released. No law enforcement, no politicians, no journalists. The Chain cannot be broken or the children—her child, her Kylie—will be executed. While Rachel scrambles to get the money together (even though it isn’t about the money, she is told) and pick a child to steal, it becomes clear that she is being tracked and her every move is being monitored. She can’t do this, she must do this, she is now a completely different person who has done this. Inspired by the “exchange kidnappings” that take place in Mexico and the old-school chain letters of his childhood, crime novelist McKinty (Police at the Station and They Don’t Look Friendly, 2017, etc.) takes what at first seems like a fantastical scenario and imbues it with all the terror, stress, trauma, and messiness of reality. At once a commentary on social media, greed, revenge, love, and true evil, and written with an almost lyrical quality, this book will have readers searching for more McKinty titles to devour.
An unmissable thriller.Pub Date: July 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-53126-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Mulholland Books/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
One wonders if Grisham weren’t sleeping through some of this as well. Whatever the case, one of his lesser cases.
Another by-the-numbers legal procedural, at once gritty and lethargic, by longtime practitioner Grisham (Gray Mountain, 2014, etc.).
“There are plenty of people who’d like to kill me right now,” grumbles Sebastian Rudd, the rogue lawyer in question. He carries a gun, works out of his car, and sleeps in a different hotel room every week, precisely because he runs up against so many bad guys who mean him harm. Some of them are cops. Why? Because Sebastian, though jaded and cynical, as literary lawyers are required to be, apparently still believes in justice, for which reason, accompanied by a bodyguard named Partner (“a hulking, heavily armed guy who wears black suits and takes me everywhere”), he finds himself in a podunk burg where a client is fighting for his life against the charge that he’s brutally murdered two little girls in a spectacularly gruesome crime. Natch, spectacular gruesomeness being another sine qua non for the bestselling crime novel. Indirection and misdirection abound, with lots of talky exposition, the requisite maverick-y norm-flouting (“At this precise moment, I am violating the rules of ethics and perhaps a criminal statute as well”), and the usual sarcastic world-weariness (“The jurors don’t believe any of this because they have known for some time that Gardy was a member of a satanic cult with a history of sexual perversion”). All this is to be expected in a genre bound by convention as tightly as our perp bound the ankles of his victims, but the reader can see most of the mystery coming from a long way off, making the yarn less effective than most. And the clichés pile on a bit too thickly, from the large-breasted moll to the bored judge who dozes at the bench.
One wonders if Grisham weren’t sleeping through some of this as well. Whatever the case, one of his lesser cases.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53943-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
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