Fast-moving, violent, and entertaining, this is genuine good-guy–versus–bad-guy stuff.
A storied marksman meets his equal in the 11th installment of Hunter’s Bob Lee Swagger series (G-Man, 2017, etc.).
Seventy-two-year-old retired sniper Bob Lee Swagger watches the prairie from his rocking chair in Idaho, neither expecting nor wanting to see anyone. But Janet McDowell shows up, saying that her son was shot by a sniper in Baghdad and that she had gone to extraordinary, fruitless trouble trying to exact vengeance on Juba the Sniper, who has killed hundreds of Americans. Swagger agrees to hunt the man down—hey, it’ll be more interesting than hanging out at Cracker Barrel. Meanwhile, Juba dreams of killing Marines—“The world was a kill box. His finger spoke for God.” Soon Swagger is in Tel Aviv, chatting with the Mossad. They want Juba, too, but they want him alive “to have a series of chats with him.” Swagger would like to feed Juba’s face to the pigs, but “Alas,” he’s told, “we’re a little Jewish country. No pigs.” Scenes with Juba show off his bloodthirsty side—wait, that’s his only side, for which he routinely gives thanks. This chap is a fascinating one-dimensional villain, crediting his bloodlust to God. Then U.S. intelligence learns that Juba is coming to America to kill a high-value target from a long-distance shot, so Swagger returns home. There’s more than enough detail in this story about hollow point shells, muzzle velocities, and precision kills from over a mile away to make Second Amendment worshipers quiver jellolike with excitement. As the title suggests, Swagger and Juba are inevitably in for a showdown, not a little chat, and it’s going to be spectacular. The author is a Pulitzer Prize–winning film critic who knows how to tell a crackling good story.
Fast-moving, violent, and entertaining, this is genuine good-guy–versus–bad-guy stuff.Pub Date: July 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-399-57457-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.
Coulter’s treasured FBI agents take on two cases marked by danger and personal involvement.
Dillon Savitch and his wife, Lacey Sherlock, have special abilities that have served them well in law enforcement (Paradox, 2018, etc.). But that doesn't prevent Sherlock’s car from hitting a running man after having been struck by a speeding SUV that runs a red light. The runner, though clearly injured, continues on his way and disappears. Not so the SUV driver, a security engineer for the Bexholt Group, which has ties to government agencies. Sherlock’s own concussion causes memory loss so severe that she doesn’t recognize Savitch or remember their son, Sean. The whole incident seems more suspicious when a blood test from the splatter of the man Sherlock hit reveals that he’s Justice Cummings, an analyst for the CIA. The agency’s refusal to cooperate makes Savitch certain that Bexholt is involved in a deep-laid plot. Meanwhile, Special Agent Griffin Hammersmith is visiting friends who run a cafe in the touristy Virginia town of Gaffers Ridge. Hammersmith, who has psychic abilities, is taken aback when he hears in his mind a woman’s cry for help. Reporter Carson DeSilva, who came to the area to interview a Nobel Prize winner, also has psychic abilities, and she overhears the thoughts of Rafer Bodine, a young man who has apparently kidnapped and possibly murdered three teenage girls. Unluckily, she blurts out her thoughts, and she’s snatched and tied up in a cellar by Bodine. Bodine may be a killer, but he’s also the nephew of the sheriff and the son of the local bigwig. So the sheriff arrests Hammersmith and refuses to accept his FBI credentials. Bodine's mother has psychic powers strong enough to kill, but she meets her match in Hammersmith, DeSilva, Savitch, and Sherlock.
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.Pub Date: July 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9365-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
Colorful, but best for those who don't mind Picoult's heavily sentimental style.
Teenaged witches, DNA evidence, Megan's Law, belladonna-laced tea, and an honest ex-con addicted to Jeopardy!, all mixed up in a well-researched if slightly disappointing small-town legal drama by veteran Picoult (Plain Truth, 2000, etc.).
Honest prep-school teacher and soccer coach Jack St. Bride has just completed an unjust sentence for statutory rape, to which he pleaded guilty only because a lazy lawyer persuaded him to hedge his bets. Somewhat unbelievably, he managed to escape being raped in prison by telling the brutal Mountain Felcher, "You're not going to break me." When he stops in Salem Falls, New Hampshire, to begin anew, things start looking up as he falls swiftly in love with his employer, fragile diner-owner Addie Peabody. The fact that she "tasted of coffee and loneliness" upon first kiss does not hinder Jack, but the law does: as a convicted sexual offender, he's required to register with the local police, and of course they can't keep a secret. Before long, there's widespread paranoia about the "dangerous rapist" on the loose in Salem Falls. Foremost of the alarmists is Amos Duncan, head of Duncan Pharmaceuticals, the town's only major corporation. His ire is exacerbated when his weird daughter Gillian, a devoted Wiccan, sets into action a chain of events that snares Jack in another rape charge—this time not merely statutory. One-third of the way in, the story turns into a courtroom battle between civil-liberties eccentric Jordan McAfee and sanctimonious prosecutor Matt Houlihan. Picoult's depiction of the legal process is excellent, especially her intriguing and thorough explanation of DNA evidence, and the narrative is impressively complicated, with a couple of eye-opening surprises. A few of the resolutions, however, seem contrived, and when the language turns lyrical or metaphorical, it falls flat.
Colorful, but best for those who don't mind Picoult's heavily sentimental style.Pub Date: April 10, 2001
ISBN: 0-7434-1870-0
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2001
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