A solid thriller that leaves you thinking it could have been much better.
On the brink of suicide following his wife's death, one-time British special-forces operative Ben Hope is intent on putting his violent past behind him and studying religion at Oxford. But when a family friend's daughter, a renowned biblical archaeologist, goes missing in Greece—and the young friend Ben sent to find her is killed in a bombing—Ben is forced to dust off his killing skills and spring back into action.
The stakes are big in Mariani's second Hope novel (The Mozart Conspiracy, 2011). Zoë Bradbury is abducted because she says she discovered an artifact that exposes as false the Book of Revelation and its ultimate promise of Rapture. This rankles an international conspiracy bent on using Revelation to orchestrate the destruction of Israel by Islamic forces. The discovery also upsets the plans of Clayton Cleaver, a popular TV evangelist in Georgia who has based his political hopes on the prophecies. Frustrated by Zoë's amnesia, caused by a head injury, her abductors threaten to inject her with a newly invented truth serum that will reduce her to psychotic rubble. Ben's pursuits take him to Savannah, where he learns that Zoë, an Amy Winehouse–like party girl, was blackmailing Cleaver. Rendered unconscious by the bad guys, Hope wakes up in Montana, where he has relatively little trouble dispatching the bad guys with the help of a smitten female CIA agent. The story takes us, finally, to Jerusalem, where Hope must thwart plans to blow up the Dome of the Rock. Mariani constructs the thriller with skill and intelligence, staging some good action scenes, and Hope is an appealing protagonist. However, the book's premise is undercooked. There's little threat of worldwide upheaval, or much of a threat to the principals. The book might well have been better off eschewing its Dan Brown Da Vincisms and turning up the tension on the more grounded elements of the story.
A solid thriller that leaves you thinking it could have been much better.Pub Date: March 6, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4391-9347-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
Here, she adapts the plot of Clint Eastwood’s Play Misty for Me, about a late-night California disc jockey whose life is...
With her latest, Brown (The Crush, 2002) passes fifty-some bongs on the New York Times bestseller list, though her score probably includes paperback reprints as well as hardcovers.
Here, she adapts the plot of Clint Eastwood’s Play Misty for Me, about a late-night California disc jockey whose life is threatened by a listener. Brown bows to Eastwood by having her DJ play the Johnny Mathis classic, “Misty,” but where Clint’s jock was menaced by a murderess, in this version Paris Gibson, a woman who has perfected a late-night voice for her callers and romantic disc-spinning in Austin, Texas, has to deal with a man who calls himself Valentino. He blames Paris’s rotten advice for all of his failures with the ladies, especially his latest, Janey. He’s already made Janey prisoner, raped her bloody (mercifully not described in detail), and plans to murder her in three days, then kill Paris herself for misleading him. The terrified DJ calls for help from her old lover, police psychologist Dean Malloy, but Valentino doesn't even wait three days to kill Janey. Ready for a remake? Play it again, Clint.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2003
ISBN: 0-7432-4552-0
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2003
A strongly felt, if not terribly gripping, sendoff for a Turow favorite nearly 35 years after his appearance in Presumed...
Trying his final case at 85, celebrated criminal defense lawyer Sandy Stern defends a Nobel-winning doctor and longtime friend whose cancer wonder drug saved Stern's life but subsequently led to the deaths of others.
Federal prosecutors are charging the eminent doctor, Kiril Pafko, with murder, fraud, and insider trading. An Argentine émigré like Stern, Pafko is no angel. His counselor is certain he sold stock in the company that produced the drug, g-Livia, before users' deaths were reported. The 78-year-old Nobelist is a serial adulterer whose former and current lovers have strong ties to the case. Working for one final time alongside his daughter and proficient legal partner, Marta, who has announced she will close the firm and retire along with her father following the case, Stern must deal not only with "senior moments" before Chief Judge Sonya "Sonny" Klonsky, but also his physical frailty. While taking a deep dive into the ups and downs of a complicated big-time trial, Turow (Testimony, 2017, etc.) crafts a love letter to his profession through his elegiac appreciation of Stern, who has appeared in all his Kindle County novels. The grandly mannered attorney (his favorite response is "Just so") has dedicated himself to the law at great personal cost. But had he not spent so much of his life inside courtrooms, "He never would have known himself." With its bland prosecutors, frequent focus on technical details like "double-blind clinical trials," and lack of real surprises, the novel likely will disappoint some fans of legal thrillers. But this smoothly efficient book gains timely depth through its discussion of thorny moral issues raised by a drug that can extend a cancer sufferer's life expectancy at the risk of suddenly ending it.
A strongly felt, if not terribly gripping, sendoff for a Turow favorite nearly 35 years after his appearance in Presumed Innocent.Pub Date: May 12, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5387-4813-8
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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