Berry sticks to his successful but bland fact-and-fantasy format.
Secret-agent-turned-bookseller Cotton Malone searches for the truth about his father’s death; uncovers revelations about a brilliant early civilization spurned by the Nazis; and earns the enmity of an endlessly evil admiral.
Our manly middle-aged recurring hero (The Venetian Betrayal, 2007, etc.) barely remembers his father, a naval officer whose submarine sank without a trace in 1971 when Malone was just ten, but he’s got a line on the truth about that sinking, an incident the Navy has covered up to the present day. Malone’s ex-boss Stephanie Nelle discharges a debt by producing a top-secret report on the sinking, long kept buried by Adm. Langford Ramsey, chief of naval intelligence. In the way of thrillers, Malone must receive the report at a tram stop high in the Alps and villains must immediately try to snatch it back, forcing him to toss a bad man from a moving ski lift and to beat a bad woman within an inch of her life. Within hours, Malone becomes involved with a Bavarian billionaire family, the Oberhausers, whose patriarchs believed that the emperor Charlemagne and his trusty lieutenant Einhard were chums with the Watchers, survivors of a brilliant civilization that had its peak long before the pyramids. Hard-bitten matriarch Isabel Oberhauser and her beautiful but fatally conflicted twin daughters, Christl and Dorothea, are interested in the secret report because the twins’ dad was also on that submarine, which went missing not in the Atlantic, as promulgated by the Navy, but off Antarctica, where the Watchers’ civilization had its heyday. Meanwhile, back in the United States, Adm. Ramsey, who knows everything about that ancient society, has dispatched his favorite hired killer to create an opening at the top of the naval structure and sent another underling to eliminate Malone and the Oberhausers. Thank goodness we have a shrewd president.
Berry sticks to his successful but bland fact-and-fantasy format.Pub Date: Dec. 9, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-345-48579-3
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2008
Dame Agatha did it much, much better.
It’s murder o’clock at a secluded, snowed-in Catskills resort.
Winter in the Catskills is just the time and place for a woodsy mountain getaway, at least for this ensemble cast. When the Mitchell’s Inn’s weekend guests arrive, “all is covered in a pure, muffling white snow,” and they are ready to relax. It’s not to be. The first evening, Dana Hart tumbles down the grand staircase to her death. It seems to be an accident, but David Paley’s lawyerly instincts lead him to suspect murder. Unfortunately, phone lines are down because of the ice storm raging outside, and the police can’t be called. Even worse, there’s no power and no generator backup. They’re stuck with a dead body, and of course, they really shouldn’t move it to preserve evidence. As the group attempts to make the best of the situation, they begin to realize that nasty secrets aren’t the exception among them but rather the rule, and as those secrets are revealed, paranoia takes hold. When more guests begin to die in suspicious ways, panic spreads, and any good sense that remained among the group blows away in the frigid winter wind. Readers who prefer likable characters won’t find many here, except perhaps Candace White, an author who was hoping for a quiet place to write her new book. Lapena’s (A Stranger in the House, 2017) very loose take on Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None further suffers from choppy, repetitive prose and an uninspiring reveal.
Dame Agatha did it much, much better.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-55762-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
As much a surgical dissection of what makes a marriage as an expertly paced, sparsely detailed psychological thriller, this...
In the near future, a man and his wife are visited by a mysterious stranger offering a chance for previously unimagined adventure, though the true exploration—and danger—might be closer to home.
Junior and Henrietta live in a dilapidated but cozy rural farmhouse, deep in a sea of canola fields, with only a few chickens for company. Their isolation is both comforting and eerie, a combination Reid pulled off exceptionally well in I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2016). Then a man named Terrance arrives with an outlandish prospect: Junior is on the long list of lottery participants chosen to take part in the Installation, a temporary space resettlement project run by OuterMore. Though Terrance’s enthusiasm is palpable, and unnerving, Junior and Hen are understandably leery. With all the cheer of a traveling Bible salesman, Terrance departs, promising to be back if Junior moves up the list. Two years pass in a flash, with Junior going about his job at the mill and Hen sinking into a minor depression of sorts. Like the warning of potential yet probable future disease, dread over Terrance’s return settles over the narrative, and Junior and Hen's relationship, which at first seems strong, wobbles. As Junior moves up the list and his departure becomes more certainty than possibility, cracks appear in the marriage; Junior struggles with memories of his past, and Hen confronts her husband with feelings she’s kept hidden for years. Terrance’s role as observer and cataloger as he prepares the couple for the Installation is claustrophobic yet revealing, and Reid builds to a deeply unsettling climax.
As much a surgical dissection of what makes a marriage as an expertly paced, sparsely detailed psychological thriller, this is one to read with the lights on.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2742-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Scout Press/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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