A fast-paced adventure with some emotional weight.
Guam-based U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Randall Dexter “Dex” Kevan Jr. becomes involved in a high-stakes gold theft in Charles’ novel.
Early in this novel, Dex’s father, also a soldier, leads a company of troops on a reconnaissance mission in Vietnam in 1969, and Tech. Sgt. McGovern joins the team. After the mission is scrubbed, McGovern’s group is killed by North Vietnamese troops, and Dex’s dad is wrongly labeled a deserter. Later, in 1986, Dex, an Air Force cargo specialist, helps offload artwork and other goods from various aircraft. When he discovers 137 gold bars onboard a plane, he learns that ousted Philippines leader Ferdinand Marcos seized his people’s property and that the United States government must return it to its rightful owners—but it turns out that gold is illegal for Filipinos to own, aside from jewelry. Instead, Dex plots to steal it, enlisting his colleagues Airman 1st Class Ernie Crenshaw, Airman 1st Class Angelina “Angel” Perez, and Tech. Sgt. Warren Gubler in his plan. Soon Filipino Col. Talan Madulás, the head of Marcos’ death squad, realizes the gold is missing and gives chase. Air Force veteran Charles’ novel feels entirely authentic, and his extensive knowledge of military aircraft and procedure lends weight to Dex’s exploits, as when the character actually steals the gold from a C-141 aircraft. The author’s prose style is largely crisp and direct. When Angel escapes capture, for instance, she chooses a clipped pronouncement over lengthy explication: “I’m no longer defenseless.” At times, the dialogue becomes a bit unrealistic (“I’ll have to check the possibility once I get off duty”), but this detracts only slightly from the compelling, well-paced plot. Similarly, some of the characters’ backstories feel underdeveloped, but every player proves memorable nonetheless—especially for such a relatively compact narrative.
A fast-paced adventure with some emotional weight.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73395-885-1
Page Count: 270
Publisher: Valkyrie Spirit Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.
Character assassination reigns supreme, if not uncontested, in a Long Island suburb.
April Masterson loves her husband, corporate attorney Elliott; their 7-year-old, Bobby; and her YouTube channel, “April’s Sweet Secrets.” What she doesn’t love is whoever’s texting her warnings about how Bobby isn’t really in their backyard while she’s busy filming her videos or withering critiques of her baking show or veiled accusations about her past and threats about her present. Her best friend, former prosecutor Julie Bressler, may be bossy and opinionated, but surely she’d never turn on April this way. Who else might know enough to send April goodies like a picture of her kissing Mark Tanner, Bobby’s soccer coach? Though April struggles to get Elliot to take her ordeal seriously, even when she shows up at his office for a lunch date, he’s protected by his receptionist, Brianna Anderson, whose attachment to her boss goes far beyond loyalty. Then Julie turns on her; Maria Cooper, her friendly new next-door neighbor, turns on her; and in the most mind-boggling scene, Doris Kirkland, April’s mother, whose dementia has brought her to a nursing home, turns on her. McFadden releases an escalating series of toxins so deftly into the suburban atmosphere that it’s practically an anticlimax when someone gets killed and April instantly becomes the prime suspect. But that’s only a setup for the tale’s boldest move: switching its narrator from April to a fair-weather friend who frames the whole nightmare in dramatically different terms. As a special gift to her savviest fans, the author throws in an even more jolting epilogue that’s as hard to forget as it is to believe.
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249600
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
Everything you’d expect from Grisham, and this time something more.
After more than three decades of producing bestselling legal thrillers, Grisham tries his hand at a whodunit.
Eleanor Barnett wants Simon Latch to write her a will. That’s pretty much his job description, since practicing law in Braxton, Virginia, for 18 years hasn’t given him much opportunity to spread his wings. But the case of Netty, as she insists he call her, is different. She’s an 85-year-old widow whose second husband, Harry Korsak, left her with something like $20 million in cash and securities. She has a pair of stepsons, Clyde and Jerry Korsak, she’s determined to disinherit. And she already has a will, a document Wally Thackerman drafted a few weeks ago that basically allowed him, as Simon soon discovers, to pillage her estate. So instead of following his usual procedure and asking his longtime secretary, Matilda Clark, to type out the will, Simon types it himself and has it witnessed without saying anything to her. Of course he’d never do what Wally Thackerman did, but given his poverty, his gambling addiction, and his estrangement from his wife, Paula, whose income is a lot more stable than his own, he wouldn’t mind drawing just a bit on Netty’s wealth. As it happens, his new client turns out to be more trouble than she’s worth, maybe even more trouble than she would’ve been worth to Wally. And when she ends up dying, her death is swiftly identified as murder, with every indication that Simon killed her himself. The whodunit is unremarkable, but Grisham handles the legal complexities of the case with professional finesse and adds a wonderfully poignant portrait of a nothingburger lawyer trying his best to keep things more or less legal.
Everything you’d expect from Grisham, and this time something more.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9780385548984
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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