A realistic and engagingly descriptive novel.
In this thriller, an entrepreneur joins an international money laundering scheme with dire personal and political consequences.
Sam Marsh seems helpless to stave off losing the hotel/restaurant that he co-owns with his ex-wife, Karin. That is,until Tony Dobbs, an old business associate who’s also under financial duress, offers him a chance to take part in a plan to help three Nigerian officials flee their country with $37 million. Sam and Tony stand to make just over $7 million, but the deal involves some unknowns:George Laney, the head of the U.S. Department of Energy, wants to use instability between Iran and Iraq to pressure the U.S. government to buy Nigerian oil, and his plan involves his cousin, Mark Woods, and two oil tankers that have been hijacked by the Nigerian army. Maitland-Lewis, the author of Emeralds Never Fade (2011), portrays Woods as an unkempt, randy alcoholic who sleeps with his maid, has a beer belly, wears “too-tight and stained trousers,” and has “pungent body odor,” all used as symbols of American-style greed and a general lack of ethics regarding foreign affairs. Sam is also shown to be consumed by monetary desires; Dina, his lover, continually asks him to abandon his plans, but he remains adamant that he needs the money. Still, Maitland-Lewis presents Sam as valiant compared to Woods, Laney, and Ambassador Glanville Tambo, whose luxurious mansion is effectively described as “so glutted with antiques, Woods became claustrophobic.” Sam and Tony’s accommodations in Lagos, meanwhile, are said to be “reminiscent of a crayon-drawing by a young child.” The novel contains plenty of detail about Lagos along the way and about the international politics at the story’s center.
A realistic and engagingly descriptive novel.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-944715-74-8
Page Count: 198
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The youngest Ryans will please fans of the genre.
The U.S. president’s son lands in the middle of a West African coup in this latest Clancy thriller.
Kyle Ryan is part of a three-man Defense Intelligence Agency team covertly installing cyber communications in Luanda, Angola. His two colleagues are murdered, and he must “run or die.” The Naval Academy grad isn’t a warrior like his older brother, Jack Junior, who sits out this story. President Ryan doesn’t even know his son is in Africa, let alone how much trouble Kyle is in. Then the unit of Navy Lieutenant Commander (and big sister) Katie Ryan gets the call to rescue Americans as an Angolan man, Victor Baptista, tries to overthrow the current democratically elected president. “Fear was the most powerful weapon in Angola,” and Baptista inspires a great deal of it. Too bad for him that the Ryan family never knuckles under to fear. Captured, hooded, and in danger of execution, Kyle has a steadfast bravery that reflects the Ryan DNA. Baptista doesn’t realize at first that among his American prisoners is President Ryan’s son. Oops. Well, with U.S. warships fast approaching Angolan shores, he thinks he can strike a deal with the “fickle and feckless Americans.” A more tuned-in advisor lets Baptista know that President Ryan will never negotiate, even with his son’s life on the line. So this isn’t just the United States the terrorist is dealing with, but the Ryan family. Katie and Kyle use their intelligence, not brute force, while a pissed-off papa bear wields his awesome executive power from the White House. Meanwhile, Baptista’s murderous cruelty leaves his aides and lackeys trembling in fear. This novel looks like Katie and Kyle’s debuts as central characters, and they are Ryans through and through—they run toward trouble, and they have no faults worth mentioning. Parental and filial loyalty mix well with the action and add interest to an otherwise standard (but good) Clancy thriller.
The youngest Ryans will please fans of the genre.Pub Date: Nov. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593718063
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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