Readers will learn a few things about Stonehenge, but not enough to justify the time required to finish the book.
Following his father's suicide, the son of a famous British archaeologist and relic collector discovers that the old man was closely involved with an ultra-secret cult of Stonehenge worshippers, one of whose key rituals demands fresh supplies of human blood.
Part cult thriller, part police procedural, Christer's first novel takes us deep into a hidden sanctuary where devout followers are painfully initiated and kidnap victims are slaughtered according to ancient rites. Gideon Chase, long estranged from his father Nathaniel, becomes obsessed with the old man's secret self after discovering journals about his doings at Stonehenge, some of them written in code. Gideon himself is the beneficiary of a cleansing ritual that eliminated a childhood disease and has immunized him from even the slightest cold ever since. On the portentous eve of the summer solstice, he is targeted by the cult. Meanwhile, Caitlyn Lock, the misbehaving daughter of the American vice president, who is attending school in London, is abducted at Stonehenge along with her new rich playboy. He had the unfortunate idea of thinking driving there would make for a cool romantic getaway. Ambitious DI Megan Baker, drawn into the plot when Gideon is attacked in his father's country mansion, has her efforts frustrated by her bureaucratic, sexist bosses and complicated by her untrustworthy ex-husband. And then there is the celebrity American bounty hunter who has come to save Caitlyn, and a flock of heavily weaponized Apache helicopters you can't wait to see blow stuff up. It's a credit to Christer, a documentary filmmaker, that he makes the story as readable and, for a while, as involving as it is. But Dan Brown he's not. As the story wobbles toward its predictable climax, you won't be looking forward to a sequel. This is a book best passed on to someone for whom the Stonehenge setting will matter more than anything.
Readers will learn a few things about Stonehenge, but not enough to justify the time required to finish the book.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-59020-676-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
Proceed at your own risk.
Pioneering pathologist Kay Scarpetta (Trace, 2004, etc.) goes up against a wraithlike killer whose self-appointed mission is to “relieve others of their suffering.”
Practice, practice, practice. If only 16-year-old South Carolina tennis phenom Drew Martin had stuck to the court instead of going off to Rome to party, her tortured corpse wouldn’t be baffling the Italian authorities, headed inexplicably by medico legale Capt. Ottorino Poma, and the International Investigative Response team, which includes both Scarpetta and her lover, forensic psychologist Benton Wesley. But the young woman’s murder and the gruesome forensic riddles it poses are something of a sideshow to the main event: the obligatory maundering of the continuing cast. Wesley still won’t leave Boston for the woman he tepidly insists he loves. Scarpetta’s niece, computer whiz Lucy Farinelli, continues to be jealously protective of her aunt. Scarpetta’s investigator, Pete Marino, is so besotted by the trailer-trash pickup who’s pushing his buttons that he does some terrible things. And Scarpetta herself is threatened by every misfit in the known universe, from a disgruntled mortician to oracular TV shrink Marilyn Self. Cornwell’s trademark forensics have long since been matched by Karin Slaughter and CSI. What’s most distinctive about this venerable franchise is the kitchen-sink plotting; the soap-opera melodrama that prevents any given volume from coming to a satisfying end; and the emphasis on titanic battles between Scarpetta and a series of Antichrists.
Proceed at your own risk.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-399-15393-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
This tense psychological thriller shows Hoag at the top of her game.
In Hoag’s (Cold, Cold Heart, 2015, etc.) latest, Minneapolis homicide detective Sam Kovac has been separated from his longtime partner, the diminutive yet hard-charging Nikki Liska.
Nikki wanted more time with her teenage sons, so she sought assignment to the department’s new cold case unit, where she's intrigued by the decades-old unsolved murder of Ted Duffy, a sex crimes detective, despite push back from a retired detective close to his family. Sam’s first case without Nikki is the double murder—"raw animal violence"—of Lucien Chamberlain, an Asian studies professor, and his wife, Sondra, who were slashed to death with the professor’s own antique samurai weapons. Chamberlain was an egotistical, misogynistic megalomaniac. Even his adult children hated him. Son Charles is damned by OCD and his father’s unachievable expectations. Daughter Diana is bipolar and hypersexual. Nikki's and Sam’s cases become parallel stories of anger, isolation, ambition, violence, revenge, and perversion. With Duffy’s widow married to his prosperous twin brother and reluctant to cooperate, Nikki has no lead until she discovers Evi, Duffy’s long-ago foster child. Sam has too many suspects, including an ex-con working for a handyman service, Charles and Diana, and professor Ken Sato, Diana’s lover and Lucien’s rival for department chair. Hoag adds depth to the tale with secondary characters like the preening Sato; fragile librarian Jennifer Duffy, broken and isolated by her father’s murder; and the new homicide lieutenant, Joan Mascherino, who's tough-minded and empathetic, with knife-keen intelligence hidden under a prim personality intolerant of swearing. With an ear for sardonic cop dialogue and humor—Sondra Chamberlain regularly ended her day with a "bottle of Chateau Blackout"—Hoag livens up these two already fast-paced, ripped-from-the-headlines mysteries with interesting factoids about such things as the history of female samurai.
This tense psychological thriller shows Hoag at the top of her game.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-525-95455-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
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