A noir masterpiece.
An enforcer and a secretary search for a missing student in this explosive noir novel set in 1971 Mexico.
“Life’s a mess.” That’s the motto of Elvis, a 21-year-old man working as an enforcer for the Hawks, a government-sponsored black-ops group whose mission is to spy on, suppress, and harass left-wing protesters and activists. Elvis is in thrall to the group’s leader, El Mago, a mysterious but charismatic figure: “He was Elvis’s god, but a dark god. The god of the Old Testament, that, as a good Catholic boy, he’d learned to fear.” El Mago gives Elvis an assignment: Find a young college student named Leonora who’s gone missing along with some photos El Mago desperately wants. Elvis’ search leads him to a 30-year-old legal secretary named Maite who agreed to feed Leonora’s cat while she was gone and who is herself looking for Leonora. Moreno-Garcia follows both Elvis and Maite, who have a few things in common—they’re both avid readers, with Maite favoring romance magazines in particular, and they’re both suckers for old crooner-style music. They’re also both somewhat lonely, with Elvis’ only friend in the group out of commission after having been attacked at a protest and Maite despairing about ever finding a boyfriend. As they separately search for the missing Leonora and Elvis keeps an eye on Maite, they encounter a host of leftist activists, artists, secret police officers, a charming antiques store owner, and more, as their paths come ever closer to crossing. It’s hard to describe how much fun this novel is—Moreno-Garcia, whose Mexican Gothic (2020) gripped readers last year, proves to be just as good at noir as she is at horror. The novel features memorable characters, taut pacing, an intricate plot, and antiheroes you can’t help but root for.
A noir masterpiece.Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-35682-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Exciting adventure that’s worthy of the Cussler name.
The Oregon crew takes on a villain who bears a long-festering grudge.
In 1945, a captured American soldier unwillingly took part in a ghastly experiment. In the current day, a malign force has built on that research and plans to wreak unholy vengeance on Guam and, ultimately, on the United States. A mysterious, much-feared man called the Vendor, an arms purveyor whose increasingly dangerous weapons have just slaughtered soldiers in Niger, is testing his killing craft in the Indian Ocean. The Vendor’s reach extends as far as Kosovo and the Celebes Sea off the Philippines, where North Koreans try out some of his handiwork. Luckily, a modest-looking cargo ship plies the seas. It’s the Oregon, with all the internal wizardry one might wish for. It has a Cray computer, Cordon Bleu–trained chefs, and plenty of amenities to keep a top-notch crew dedicated. The seawater-powered ship can even change its outward appearance to disguise itself as the lowliest third-world rust bucket. In charge of this marvel is Juan Cabrillo, the protagonist. The crew of the Oregon are independent contractors and undertake an urgent mission from the CIA to investigate arms trafficking by the Taliban. That leads to an inevitable collision with the Vendor, whose tentacles reach far and wide. This might spell the end for Cabrillo because the Vendor “had proven himself unequaled in unarmed combat.” The Oregon Files series is always fun, and this episode is no exception. Cabrillo is a terrific leader in top physical shape, but he and the ship itself are tested to their limits. Of course, some of Oregon’s features beggar belief, but never you mind. They fit in well with the now-and-then over-the-top writing: “A giant piece of red-hot aluminum sliced through Juan’s fragile canopy like a drunken samurai’s katana through a rice-paper wall.” It’s hard to read a simile like that and not stop and smile. And in the same action sequence, the hero hits an object “like a speeding hockey forward cross-checking a parked Zamboni.” Ouch. It all “hurt like the dickens,” which is about as salty as the language gets.
Exciting adventure that’s worthy of the Cussler name.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9780593719244
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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