A dark thriller to keep the reading lamp turned on long into the night; recommended.
In this London-based novel, the deputy director of MI5 must untangle herself from blackmail; an enraged woman vows to regain her husband’s affection; and international terrorists rev up their demands.
In Duncan’s (Quantum of Evidence, 2018, etc.) series opener, MI5 Deputy Director Deborah Mackenzie fears a male escort may expose their relationship. The man, Connor “Black Irish” O’Connor, is “a rising star in the exploding cybersecurity galaxy” who enjoys a double life trysting for cash and may be participating in the dark arts of international terrorism. Under false pretenses, Mackenzie tasks MI5 surveillance officer Kate St. Claire with digging up dirt on the gigolo that she can use to silence him. Kate just completed a period of compassionate leave following the deaths of her parents, Lord Jonathan St. Claire and his wife. A car bomb killed the pair and gravely injured Kate. The auto was Kate’s Alfa Romeo Spider, parked in the garage of her Mayfair Mews house when Lord Jonathan turned on the ignition. The previous evening was such a happy one for Kate, one she shared with Tariq Kassar, the Lebanese banker she dated since her father introduced them 16 months earlier. But Kate’s relationship with Tariq incenses his estranged wife, Nadia Sultan, unafraid of violence and accustomed to stalking her replacement. Suspiciously, Tariq virtually disappears after the explosion, leading some to believe that he’s involved in nefarious activities and that he may have rigged the Spider. Yet Kate believes her beau simply dumped her and that the bombing was connected to one of her work assignments. Duncan juggles numerous plots, most of which come together but some of which undoubtedly will be tackled in later books in the series. It’s refreshing to have strong, culpable female characters whose actions range from engaging in questionable activities (nude modeling, affairs with married men) to committing murder. Several characters have multiple aliases, which can be confusing. But descriptions are rich, and the pace is fast and furious as Kate seeks answers to professional and personal problems in England, France, and Morocco.
A dark thriller to keep the reading lamp turned on long into the night; recommended.Pub Date: Aug. 31, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 343
Publisher: Western Isles Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PROFILES
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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