A Dan Brown-ian secular conspiracy about The Virgin Queen driving nonstop international intrigue.
Berry (The Columbus Affair, 2013, etc.) mixes Henry VIII, Elizabeth I and terrorists into Cotton Malone's eighth adventure.
Malone is retired from the Magellan Billet, the U.S. Justice Department’s supersecret unit. He now owns a Copenhagen bookstore. Malone’s been summoned to Atlanta, his ex-wife’s home, where she’s shocked their son, Gary, with a buried secret: Malone isn’t his biological father. Gary’s angry. He wants to spend time in Copenhagen. Aware of his trip, Malone’s former Magellan boss asks him to escort a runaway street kid to London. Ian Dunne witnessed a CIA agent’s death. Berry’s narrative catalyst was a real-life headline—Scotland’s release of the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. The CIA isn’t happy, and the British government won’t act. The Malones and Dunne no sooner have their feet on the ground in London than they’re kidnapped by agents working for Blake Antrim, of the Brussels-based CIA special operations counterterrorism team. Antrim is scheming to use a Tudor-era conspiracy involving Elizabeth I that reflects on the current monarchy’s legitimacy to pressure the Brits to stop the release. Post–Malone kidnapping, there are escapes and evasions, all transpiring while Antrim’s crew also opens Henry VIII’s tomb in Windsor Castle’s St. George’s Chapel. Next, hard-charging Kathleen Richards of England’s Serious Organized Crime Agency jumps into the whirlwind. Tudor-era rumors manipulating terrorist negotiations may seem realpolitik overkill, but it’s ample ammunition for Berry’s cinematic action to ricochet through castles, manor grounds and London’s Underground while involving a professor assassinated but not dead, scholarly twin sisters and Sir Thomas Mathews, the British SIS’s Machiavellian chief. Antrim’s efforts are apparently stymied by the Daedalus Society, an ancient monarchy-preservation group, but then he succumbs to a bribe. Sir Thomas dissembles, manipulates and murders; Antrim’s self-interest manifests; a secreted manuscript encoded by Robert Cecil, Elizabeth I’s confidant and secretary of state, is deciphered; Bram Stoker’s nonfiction work is cited, and Malone, the teenage boys and Richards survive more entrapments and gun battles than humanly possible.
A Dan Brown-ian secular conspiracy about The Virgin Queen driving nonstop international intrigue.Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-345-52654-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2013
A forced effort to leverage interest around the legendary Chelsea Hotel, this novel is a miss.
Perennial Broadway understudy Hazel Ripley and center-stage bombshell Maxine Mead formed a close bond as performers touring with the USO during World War ll. Now that they’ve been home for five years, can their friendship survive the McCarthy-era witch hunt for Communists in show business?
Davis (The Masterpiece, 2018, etc.) has built her brand crafting historical fiction set at New York landmarks like the Barbizon Hotel, the Dakota apartment building, and Grand Central Terminal. Now readers are taken behind the doors of the storied Chelsea Hotel, a creative oasis for artists and freethinkers, as Hazel and Maxine try to navigate the Broadway theater scene. While Hazel has never enjoyed success onstage, she discovers a talent for playwriting and directing. Her career is off to a promising start, especially since bestie Maxine has agreed to use her star power as a box office draw for Hazel’s show. Their drama unfolds offstage when both women are named on a list of Communist sympathizers and must testify about suspected anti-American activities. With a high-stakes storyline that should be tension-filled, the novel unfortunately features prose that is expository and flat. Maxine’s diary confessionals fail to give any insight into her inner life and seem only to serve as information downloads. Even revelations that should shock evoke a tepid response, probably because the buildup has been so noncompelling. Thankfully, Hazel’s relationships—with everyone from her mother to a private investigator working in tandem with the FBI—are more engaging and complex. Notably absent from the cast list, though, is the Chelsea Hotel itself. In Davis’ previous novels, the setting plays an integral role in the storyline. Here, though, the sparse descriptions of the site seem to be almost an afterthought. Hazel and Maxine could have been living at a Holiday Inn and it would have had no effect on the telling.
A forced effort to leverage interest around the legendary Chelsea Hotel, this novel is a miss.Pub Date: July 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4458-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A delightful debut spiced with a tempestuous romance and certain to appeal to fans of genealogical research and history.
A Texas genealogist’s search for the truth of an old murder precipitates a present-day killing.
Austin-based Lucy Lancaster is doing research for Texas legend Gus Halloran, who’s convinced that his great-great grandfather Seth was murdered despite the 1849 newspaper stories that say he was trampled by a horse. The sole witness was photographer Jeb Inscore, and Lucy hits the jackpot when she visits his great-granddaughter Betty-Anne Inscore-Cooper, whose boxes of daguerreotypes include one that depicts Seth lying dead in a bloodstained shirt. Inscore’s journals reveal that someone with the initials C.A. paid to have Seth murdered; the multiple hoof marks on his body were intended to hide a knife wound. The most likely candidates are Cantwell Ayers and Caleb Applewhite, whose descendant is running for the Senate against Halloran’s son. Soon after a tipsy Lucy tells reporters at a news conference how she found the evidence of the old murder, she’s visited by FBI Special Agent Ben Turner, who has a lot of annoying questions about her work for Halloran and her amateur investigation, as boxes of daguerreotypes have been stolen from Betty-Anne. Fortunately, Lucy’s turned over the other daguerreotypes and journals to her friend Winnie Dell, the curator for a history center at the University of Texas at Austin. Unfortunately, Winnie is murdered and the daguerreotype of Seth stolen. Lucy’s officemates, Serena and Josephine, are constantly trying to get their gal pal back in the dating game after a bad breakup. They consider Ben a good bet even though the pair constantly wrangle over Lucy’s sleuthing. In the end, Lucy’s hot-and-cold relationship with Ben helps to turn up more clues about the old murder that’s caused her friend’s death.
A delightful debut spiced with a tempestuous romance and certain to appeal to fans of genealogical research and history.Pub Date: March 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-18903-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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