by Steven Konkoly ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 8, 2012
An exuberantly plotted, if uneven, entry in a promising thriller series.
Action hero Daniel Petrovich tackles a worldwide biological-weapons threat in the second installment of Konkoly’s (Black Flagged, 2011, etc.) thriller series.
In a rural compound in Argentina, retired U.S. general Terrence Sanderson plans to reactivate his rogue Black Flag training program. He believes that the only effective way to tackle the world’s problems is by sending operatives on under-the-radar black-ops missions. However, Sanderson is wanted by the FBI for past misdeeds, and his best operatives, married couple Daniel and Jessica Petrovich, are having issues of their own. Jessica, who’s haunted by her previous undercover work, even tries to talk her husband into leaving the program. Amid this tension, a new assignment bubbles up: CIA agent Karl Berg, who has gone “off the books” before, has gotten wind that a disgruntled Russian scientist has unleashed a virulent virus into the water of a remote Russian town to demonstrate the weapon’s worth to Muslim extremists. With Daniel on the ground in Russia and illegally deployed CIA drones in the air, Sanderson and Berg join forces to observe the contagion and track down the scientist before the Russian government covers up the danger. Meanwhile, Jessica, taking a break in Buenos Aires, gets a visit from Serbians seeking revenge. The pace certainly doesn’t flag in this second entry in U.S. Naval Academy graduate Konkoly’s series. The book has an often confusing array of government-agency players, which makes Konkoly’s front-of-book character list a particularly welcome and necessary reference. The author’s description of the rabies-like Russian contagion is particularly intriguing and will no doubt please fans of The Walking Dead graphic-novel and TV series. The series continues to struggle with character development, however, within its imaginative plots; for example, Daniel, who rose up as a potential hero of the series in the first book, retreats somewhat into the background here, serving as merely another tool in the author’s entertaining tale of covert activities on the world stage.
An exuberantly plotted, if uneven, entry in a promising thriller series.Pub Date: May 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-1477401392
Page Count: 382
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Michael Crichton ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 23, 2017
Falls short of Crichton’s many blockbusters, but fun reading nonetheless, especially for those interested in the early days...
In 1876, professor Edward Cope takes a group of students to the unforgiving American West to hunt for dinosaur fossils, and they make a tremendous discovery.
William Jason Tertullius Johnson, son of a shipbuilder and beneficiary of his father’s largess, isn’t doing very well at Yale when he makes a bet with his archrival (because every young man has one): accompany “the bone professor” Othniel Marsh to the West to dig for dinosaur fossils or pony up $1,000, but Marsh will only let Johnson join if he has a skill they can use. They need a photographer, so Johnson throws himself into the grueling task of learning photography, eventually becoming proficient. When Marsh and the team leave without him, he hitches a ride with another celebrated paleontologist, Marsh’s bitter rival, Edward Cope. Despite warnings about Indian activity, into the Judith badlands they go. It’s a harrowing trip: they weather everything from stampeding buffalo to back-breaking work, but it proves to be worth it after they discover the teeth of what looks to be a giant dinosaur, and it could be the discovery of the century if they can only get them back home safely. When the team gets separated while transporting the bones, Johnson finds himself in Deadwood and must find a way to get the bones home—and stay alive doing it. The manuscript for this novel was discovered in Crichton’s (Pirate Latitudes, 2009, etc.) archives by his wife, Sherri, and predates Jurassic Park (1990), but if readers are looking for the same experience, they may be disappointed: it’s strictly formulaic stuff. Famous folk like the Earp brothers make appearances, and Cope and Marsh, and the feud between them, were very real, although Johnson is the author’s own creation. Crichton takes a sympathetic view of American Indians and their plight, and his appreciation of the American West, and its harsh beauty, is obvious.
Falls short of Crichton’s many blockbusters, but fun reading nonetheless, especially for those interested in the early days of American paleontology.Pub Date: May 23, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-247335-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
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by Karin Slaughter ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 29, 2015
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that...
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Twenty-four years after a traumatic disappearance tore a Georgia family apart, Slaughter’s scorching stand-alone picks them up and shreds them all over again.
The Carrolls have never been the same since 19-year-old Julia vanished. After years of fruitlessly pestering the police, her veterinarian father, Sam, killed himself; her librarian mother, Helen, still keeps the girl's bedroom untouched, just in case. Julia’s sisters have been equally scarred. Lydia Delgado has sold herself for drugs countless times, though she’s been clean for years now; Claire Scott has just been paroled after knee-capping her tennis partner for a thoughtless remark. The evening that Claire’s ankle bracelet comes off, her architect husband, Paul, is callously murdered before her eyes and, without a moment's letup, she stumbles on a mountainous cache of snuff porn. Paul’s business partner, Adam Quinn, demands information from Claire and threatens her with dire consequences if she doesn’t deliver. The Dunwoody police prove as ineffectual as ever. FBI agent Fred Nolan is more suavely menacing than helpful. So Lydia and Claire, who’ve grown so far apart that they’re virtual strangers, are unwillingly thrown back on each other for help. Once she’s plunged you into this maelstrom, Slaughter shreds your own nerves along with those of the sisters, not simply by a parade of gruesome revelations—though she supplies them in abundance—but by peeling back layer after layer from beloved family members Claire and Lydia thought they knew. The results are harrowing.
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that she makes most of her high-wire competition look pallid, formulaic, or just plain fake.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-242905-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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