by Stephen Elder ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A
An assassin story that delivers action while shrewdly examining the consequences.
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In Elder’s (Daughters of the World, 2014, etc.) thriller, sex-trafficking mobsters and U.S. authorities threaten a secret group that specializes in administering justice for violated women.
Sandra Neuermann is raped and narrowly escapes her assailants, who likely would have killed her. Cops apprehend the two men, but the arrest is thrown out on a technicality. This makes Neuermann a perfect recruit for Nemesis, a covert organization (of mostly women) that helps rape victims and targets those attackers who’ve escaped punishment. Neuermann trains as a Fury, a field operative, going after and sometimes killing rapists as well as sex traffickers, like an Albanian Mafia family in New York. However, Nemesis’ full-on assault against said family may be drawing too much attention from both gangsters and the alphabet soup of U.S. agencies, who’ve noticed that a lot of baddies have been disappearing. Elder’s thriller highlights a group of female agents without turning the idea into a gimmick. The women are undeniably formidable with guns, fisticuffs, or at a computer: Bridget O’Rourke “tapped her keyboard and the engines in the Mercedes and the Range Rover died. The doors locked, and the occupants heard a loud pop. It was the last thing they heard as the canisters released a knockout gas.” The villains are a largely rotten bunch, seemingly deserving of their fate at the business end of a Sig or sniper rifle. Yet Elder deepens his story by addressing the inevitable fallout: one Fury in particular is devastated when she has to kill an innocent bystander simply because he could have identified her later. Nemesis Director Jeanne Mooth, too, prides herself on the organization’s hovering under the radar—something that’s increasingly difficult to accomplish when it’s abundantly clear to all interested parties that someone is specifically targeting the Albanian mob’s brothels. Neuermann is a well-established protagonist who starts a relationship with handsome, kindhearted teacher Daniel, which may explain her gradual aversion to killing and preference for less-personal strikes against sex-trafficking groups. Unfortunately, other Furies don’t receive as much characterization. Many are relegated to Nemesis reports; Jane and Arlene, for example, first appear as names in their filed paperwork, merely to introduce (and close) the latest rapist’s case. The ending may shock more than a few readers, but it definitely packs a dramatic punch.
An assassin story that delivers action while shrewdly examining the consequences.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Colleen Hoover ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 2, 2016
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of...
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Hoover’s (November 9, 2015, etc.) latest tackles the difficult subject of domestic violence with romantic tenderness and emotional heft.
At first glance, the couple is edgy but cute: Lily Bloom runs a flower shop for people who hate flowers; Ryle Kincaid is a surgeon who says he never wants to get married or have kids. They meet on a rooftop in Boston on the night Ryle loses a patient and Lily attends her abusive father’s funeral. The provocative opening takes a dark turn when Lily receives a warning about Ryle’s intentions from his sister, who becomes Lily’s employee and close friend. Lily swears she’ll never end up in another abusive home, but when Ryle starts to show all the same warning signs that her mother ignored, Lily learns just how hard it is to say goodbye. When Ryle is not in the throes of a jealous rage, his redeeming qualities return, and Lily can justify his behavior: “I think we needed what happened on the stairwell to happen so that I would know his past and we’d be able to work on it together,” she tells herself. Lily marries Ryle hoping the good will outweigh the bad, and the mother-daughter dynamics evolve beautifully as Lily reflects on her childhood with fresh eyes. Diary entries fancifully addressed to TV host Ellen DeGeneres serve as flashbacks to Lily’s teenage years, when she met her first love, Atlas Corrigan, a homeless boy she found squatting in a neighbor’s house. When Atlas turns up in Boston, now a successful chef, he begs Lily to leave Ryle. Despite the better option right in front of her, an unexpected complication forces Lily to cut ties with Atlas, confront Ryle, and try to end the cycle of abuse before it’s too late. The relationships are portrayed with compassion and honesty, and the author’s note at the end that explains Hoover’s personal connection to the subject matter is a must-read.
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of the survivors.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1036-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020
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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