Another page-turning thriller blending history, speculation and fast-paced action.
During the Great Depression, former Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon gave President Franklin Delano Roosevelt a marked dollar bill and a cryptic note. The puzzle contained in those items now forces retired intelligence agent Cotton Malone to save the world economy.
Berry (The Lincoln Myth, 2014, etc.) yanks Malone out of his Copenhagen bookstore and sends him to Venice to shoot at a helicopter. The chopper crashes. Twenty million dollars go up in smoke—money from a scheme to fill the coffers of North Korea’s Dear Leader. Stephanie Nelle, chief of the Magellan Billet—the U.S. Justice Department’s elite intelligence group—had dispatched Malone to foil that caper, but he’s soon immersed in a scheme engineered by "self-absorbed, egotistical, and maniacal" Kim Yong Jin, the Dear Leader’s exiled half brother. That rogue is hunting U.S. tax protestor Anan Wayne Howell, who supposedly possesses evidence that the American income tax isn’t valid because "the 16th Amendment was illegal all along." There’s more: evidence that descendants of Haym Salomon are owed multiple billions for loans made to finance the American Revolution. "Bringing the United States to its knees would not be easy, but it also no longer seemed impossible" now that the long-secreted material has been uncovered by a disgruntled Treasury bureaucrat and given to Howell. The most interesting character is Hana Sung, Kim’s illegitimate daughter, who spent her childhood in a North Korean gulag, living in filth, starved and beaten. Action is frantic, major characters are static, but Malone joins forces with serious-minded Treasury agent Isabella Schaefer—an evolving player sure to appear in upcoming Magellan superspy adventures—in shoot-'em-ups from Venice to the wilds of Croatia.
Another page-turning thriller blending history, speculation and fast-paced action.Pub Date: March 31, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-05623-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Jan. 7, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
Fans of literate mysteries will appreciate the complex but realistic story, the satisfying resolution and the descriptive...
The "See-No-Evil" serial killer is jailed awaiting trial, and the last thing Sheriff's Detective Tony Mendez needs is another murder victim, especially a beautiful young woman brutally stabbed and slashed.
Marissa Fordham, a rising young artist and the protégé of the wealthy Milo Bordain, is discovered murdered in her isolated cottage. Haley, her 4-year-old daughter, rests badly injured on her mother's bloody corpse. Mendez catches the case, ably assisted by Vince Leone, a retired FBI profiler who helped solve the "See-No-Evil" mystery. Leone has retired and married a local teacher, Anne Navarre, who was almost murdered by the jailed serial killer. Anne is now studying child psychology and working as a court-appointed special advocate in juvenile cases, and she persuades a reluctant Vince to let her care for Haley. That necessary and time-consuming task deflects her from counseling an apparently psychopathic middle-school student who has stabbed a classmate. Mendez and Leone have more than one suspect in Marissa's brutal murder, even though the victim isn't all—or is more than—she seems to be. Hoag (Deeper Than the Dead, 2009, etc.) again stages her mystery in Oak Knoll, a fictional town somewhere near the beautiful landscape surrounding Santa Barbara and Lompoc, Calif., and her gift for description makes the area come alive. The author also discovers a suitable set of suspects ranging from Bordain's Mercedes-dealer son, a mathematical genius and college professor with Asperger's Syndrome and mother issues, and a prosperous and adulterous attorney who may or may not have been linked to the "See-No-Evil" serial killer. The good guys are less dramatic, although Hoag's character sketches are memorable, right down to minor players like the county sheriff, Cal Dixon.
Fans of literate mysteries will appreciate the complex but realistic story, the satisfying resolution and the descriptive writing.Pub Date: Dec. 28, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-525-95192-6
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2010
More perhaps than any of Connelly’s much-honored other titles, this one reveals why his procedurals are the most soulful in...
The 30th novel by the creator of Harry Bosch (The Wrong Side of Goodbye, 2016, etc.) and the Lincoln Lawyer (The Gods of Guilt, 2013, etc.) introduces an LAPD detective fighting doggedly for justice for herself and a wide array of victims.
Ever since her partner, Detective Ken Chastain, failed to back up her sexual harassment claim against Lt. Robert Olivas, her supervisor at the Robbery Homicide Division, Renée Ballard has been banished to the midnight shift—the late show. She’s kept her chin down and worked her cases, most of which are routinely passed on to the day shifts, without complaints or recriminations. But that all ends the night she and Detective John Jenkins, the partner who’s running on empty, are called to The Dancers, a nightclub where five people have been shot dead. Three of them—a bookie, a drug dealer, and a rumored mob enforcer—are no great loss, but Ballard can’t forget Cynthia Haddel, the young woman serving drinks while she waited for her acting career to take off. The case naturally falls to Olivas, who humiliatingly shunts Ballard aside. But she persists in following leads during her time off even though she’d already caught another case earlier the same night, the brutal assault on Ramona Ramone, ne Ramón Gutierrez, a trans hooker beaten nearly to death who mumbles something about “the upside-down house” before lapsing into a coma. Despite, or because of, the flak she gets from across the LAPD, Ballard soldiers on, horrified but energized when Chastain is gunned down only a few hours after she tells him off for the way he let her down two years ago. She’ll run into layers of interference, get kidnapped herself, expose a leak in the department, kill a man, and find some wholly unexpected allies before she claps the cuffs on the killer in a richly satisfying conclusion.
More perhaps than any of Connelly’s much-honored other titles, this one reveals why his procedurals are the most soulful in the business: because he finds the soul in the smallest details, faithfully executed.Pub Date: July 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-22598-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
