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
More like a con than a truly satisfying psychological mystery.
What should be a rare horror—a woman gone missing—becomes a pattern in Kubica's latest thriller.
One night, a young mother goes for a run. She never comes home. A few weeks later, the body of Meredith, another missing woman, is found with a self-inflicted knife wound; the only clue about the fate of her still-missing 6-year-old daughter, Delilah, is a note that reads, "You’ll never find her. Don’t even try." Eleven years later, a girl escapes from a basement where she’s been held captive and severely abused; she reports that she is Delilah. Kubica alternates between chapters in the present narrated by Delilah’s younger brother, Leo, now 15 and resentful of the hold Delilah’s disappearance and Meredith’s death have had on his father, and chapters from 11 years earlier, narrated by Meredith and her neighbor Kate. Meredith begins receiving texts that threaten to expose her and tear her life apart; she struggles to keep them, and her anxiety, from her family as she goes through the motions of teaching yoga and working as a doula. One client in particular worries her; Meredith fears her husband might be abusing her, and she's also unhappy with the way the woman’s obstetrician treats her. So this novel is both a mystery about what led to Meredith’s death and Delilah’s imprisonment and the story of what Delilah's return might mean to her family and all their well-meaning neighbors. Someone is not who they seem; someone has been keeping secrets for 11 long years. The chapters complement one another like a patchwork quilt, slowly revealing the rotten heart of a murderer amid a number of misdirections. The main problem: As it becomes clear whodunit, there’s no true groundwork laid for us to believe that this person would behave at all the way they do.
More like a con than a truly satisfying psychological mystery.Pub Date: May 18, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-778-38944-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Park Row Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.
A successful Vermont podcaster who’s elicited confessions from dozens of criminals finds herself on the other side of the table, in the hottest of hot seats, over her own troubled past.
Poe Webb was only 13 when she saw her mother, Margaret McMillian, get stabbed to death by the man she’d picked up for a quickie. Poe had vowed revenge, but how could a kid find and avenge herself on a stranger who’d vanished as quickly as he appeared? In the long years since then, Poe’s made a name for herself as a top true-crime podcaster who routinely invites her guests to tell her audience exactly what they did. Now, she’s being pressed, and pressed hard, by Ian Hindley, whose fake name echoes those of England’s Moors Murderers, to join him in a livestream her fans will find riveting because, as Hindley tells her, he’s actually Leopold Hutchins, the pickup who stabbed her mother 14 times when she failed to use her safe word. Skeptical? Hindley knows endless details about the killing that were never released by the police. If Poe won’t do the broadcast, Hindley threatens to harm everyone she loves: her father; her producer and lover, Kip Nguyen; and her black Lab, Bailey. And there’s one more complication that makes the pressure on Poe even more unbearable. Seven years ago, against all odds, she succeeded in tracking Leopold Hutchins from Burlington to New York and killing him herself. In fact, it’s that murder that Hindley most wants her to talk about. Which bully is more fearsome, the man who’s threatening her or the man she killed?
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781464226229
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
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