by Stephen Maitland-Lewis ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 17, 2020
A realistic and engagingly descriptive novel.
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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
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by Stacy Willingham ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 11, 2022
The story is sadly familiar, the treatment claustrophobically intense.
Twenty years after Chloe Davis’ father was convicted of killing half a dozen young women, someone seems to be celebrating the anniversary by extending the list.
No one in little Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, was left untouched by Richard Davis’ confession, least of all his family members. His wife, Mona, tried to kill herself and has been incapacitated ever since. His son, Cooper, became so suspicious that even now it’s hard for him to accept pharmaceutical salesman Daniel Briggs, whose sister, Sophie, also vanished 20 years ago, as Chloe’s fiance. And Chloe’s own nightmares, which lead her to rebuff New York Times reporter Aaron Jansen, who wants to interview her for an anniversary story, are redoubled when her newest psychiatric patient, Lacey Deckler, follows the path of high school student Aubrey Gravino by disappearing and then turning up dead. The good news is that Dick Davis, whom Chloe has had no contact with ever since he was imprisoned after his confession, obviously didn’t commit these new crimes. The bad news is that someone else did, someone who knows a great deal about the earlier cases, someone who could be very close to Chloe indeed. First-timer Willingham laces her first-person narrative with a stifling sense of victimhood that extends even to the survivors and a series of climactic revelations, at least some of which are guaranteed to surprise the most hard-bitten readers.
The story is sadly familiar, the treatment claustrophobically intense.Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-2508-0382-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
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by Don Bentley ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 23, 2023
A well-turned, if predictable, installment in the popular series.
With the United States the “closest [it’s] been to war” in a lifetime, intelligence operative Jack Ryan Jr. faces stiff odds in trying to avert disaster with China.
Trouble with China begins brewing (yet again in the Clancy books) with the rendition of a Chinese scientist and the killing of his American brother, a specialist in machine learning. With a sniper attack on the German outpost of The Campus, Ryan’s “off-the-books” agency, and the downing of an American plane over the South China Sea, U.S. efforts to recover a Chinese undersea glider capable of detecting a $3 billion American stealth submarine are in jeopardy. Things look especially grim with the capture of crash survivor John Clark, Ryan’s boss and a close compadre of his father, President Jack Ryan Sr. With Ryan Sr. still shaken by the abduction of his wife a year ago and Ryan Jr. doubtful of his abilities as a team leader, it's up to intelligence director Mary Pat Foley to calm the waters with her expertise and strong will. One possible outcome is a Chinese attack on Taiwan. In Bentley’s third outing in the series, it takes a while to get past cookie cutter stuff: Many pages go by before the reader knows what all the tense language, chase scenes, and international travel are about. But the book's cool, checkerboard efficiency eventually takes hold. And the streaks of vulnerability that run through the Ryans impart a human dimension that most such thrillers lack. Bentley also takes pains to distinguish the novel from fake fiction: “Unlike in the movies, getting struck by a rifle round moving at several thousand feet per second was not insignificant.”
A well-turned, if predictable, installment in the popular series.Pub Date: May 23, 2023
ISBN: 9780593422786
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
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