Best known for his nonfiction (Becoming a Mountain, 2015, etc.), Alter delivers an engaging international thriller.
When an American missionary working as a CIA agent is murdered in Mussoorie, a hill station in the Himalayas near India's border with Tibet, American and Indian intelligence suspect China is behind the killing.
That suspicion is heightened by the murder of two Indian border guards in this otherwise sleepy retreat, where Col. Imtiaz Afridi, "a legend and an enigma" in India's Research and Analysis Wing, monitors affairs from the army's supersophisticated but ill-reputed Himalayan Research Institute. Though confined to a wheelchair following a climbing accident on Mount Rataban, the 68-year-old Afridi, a retired army officer, whizzes around in a private helicopter. The novel boasts an expansive cast of characters including Anna Tagore, a brilliant and impetuous linguistic specialist who is working with Afridi; Noya, an Israeli mystic and language student whose lover, Renzin, is Afridi's son; and Karan, an Indian undercover agent who has spent relatively little time in his native country. We learn that the killings are part of a conspiracy tied to Afridi's past. Terrorists may be involved; the Dalai Lama may not be safe. Alter, a missionary's son who was born and raised in India and lives in Mussoorie, employs the colorful setting like a character, reveling in its heights and shadows as well as its dark history and legend. He writes in a contained, understated style, without much in the way of complexity, but he's a confident plotter who knows how to keep things zipping along and dial up tension.
Best known for his nonfiction (Becoming a Mountain, 2015, etc.), Alter delivers an engaging international thriller.Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62872-575-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Everything is not quite as it seems in this quick, satisfying read.
A woman is on the run with cash, a burner phone, and plans that have taken most of a year to build. But can she escape?
Beth Murphy, from Pine Bluff, Arkansas, has planned every detail of her departure meticulously; from her new name to her new appearance and car, she is leaving nothing to chance. But the person she is fleeing continues to be an overwhelming presence in her mind, and she expects to see him hiding in every shadow. He has trained her well through years of abuse, and she knows that he will find her—the only question is when. Her jumpiness during the days and terror-soaked nights are hardly going unnoticed, and it becomes obvious to her new co-workers and rooming-house neighbors that she is not who she says she is. From her new life as a cleaner in Atlanta, Beth obsessively tracks the media coverage of a missing woman from Pine Bluff, Sabine Hardison, and the police’s search for her. Sabine is a successful realtor who disappeared one afternoon while her husband was away on business, but as the police dig deeper, it becomes clear that this was not a happy marriage. Suspense author Belle (Three Days Missing, 2018, etc.) switches among three points of view as the story unfolds, giving insights into Beth and her efforts to re-create herself; Sabine’s husband, Jeffrey, who is picking up the pieces left behind by his wife's disappearance while coming to terms with the aggressive publicity around his marriage’s shortcomings; and the detective, Marcus, who has been assigned to find out where Sabine has gone. Is Beth actually Sabine? Is she not? Are those continuity errors the whisper of red herrings or just the different ways multiple characters perceive the same events? An unexpected ending hinges on information missing from the story.
Everything is not quite as it seems in this quick, satisfying read.Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7783-0859-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Park Row Books
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
For once Deaver takes more effort to establish his hero’s bona fides than to give him a compelling and logical plot. The...
Veteran thrillmeister Deaver kicks off a new series about a man who collects rewards for a living.
Don’t call Colter Shaw a private eye, or a freelance investigator, or even a soldier of fortune, though his job includes elements of all three. The son of a cranky survivalist who died years ago amid suspicious circumstances, light-footed Shaw has returned close to his childhood home in the Bay Area in the hope of claiming the $10,000 Frank Mulliner is offering for the return of his daughter, Sophie, a college student who stormed out after the two of them fought over the FOR SALE sign outside his house and hasn’t been seen since. Shaw, who has the cool-headed but irritating habit of calculating the numerical odds on every possibility, thinks there’s a 60 percent chance that Sophie’s dead, “murdered by a serial killer, rapist or a gang wannabe.” Even though he accepts rewards only for rescues, not recoveries, he begins sorting through the scant evidence, quickly gets a hot lead about Sophie’s fate, and just as quickly realizes that Detective Dan Wiley, of the Joint Major Crimes Task Force, should have followed exactly the same clues days ago. (The rapidly shifting relations between Shaw and the law, in fact, are a particular high point here.) The day after Shaw’s search for Sophie comes to a violent end, he’s already, in the time-honored manner of Deaver’s bulldog heroes (The Burial Hour, 2017, etc.), on the trail of a second abduction, that of LGBT activist Henry Thompson. Readers who haven’t skipped the prologue will know that still a third kidnap victim, very pregnant Elizabeth Chabelle, will need to be rescued the following day. Thompson’s grief-stricken partner, Brian Byrd, tells Shaw, “It’s like this guy’s playing some goddamn sick game”—a remark Deaver’s fans will know to give just as much weight as Shaw himself does.
For once Deaver takes more effort to establish his hero’s bona fides than to give him a compelling and logical plot. The results are subpar for this initial installment but more encouraging for the promised series.Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-53594-2
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
