The weightless style is Woods’, but the smartly engineered complications involving multiple malefactors who plot at serenely...
Perennial bestseller Woods and veteran Hall, who’ve already teamed up to spin a yarn starring Teddy Fay, the ex–CIA operative gone spectacularly rogue (Smooth Operator, 2016), give New York attorney Stone Barrington’s rising-star partner and former client Herbie Fisher a case of his own.
Not that it’s really Herbie’s case. He’s just the lawyer at Woodman & Weld who answers the phone when his colleague James Glick, stricken with appendicitis, is looking for someone, anyone, to take his place in the courtroom and appear on behalf of David Ross, a pre-law student at Columbia caught at a party with a pocketful of cocaine, whose father, a city councilman, has arranged a sweetheart plea bargain that will keep his son out of jail. The plea bargain is authentic, but the appendicitis isn’t: Glick’s desperate to get out from under the demand that he lose the case pronto so that David will go to jail, where vengeful real estate mogul Jules Kenworth can use his vulnerable position to keep putting pressure on the councilman. And the kid, insisting that he’s innocent, refuses to take the deal. So Herbie, who thought he’d be spending 10 minutes in court, ends up cross-examining witnesses whose testimonies he knows nothing about and, in the process, mightily, though unwittingly, angering Tommy Taperelli, the fixer Kenworth has engaged to ensure a guilty verdict. Dazed and confused, Herbie can hardly wait to return to his Park Avenue penthouse to spend some quality time with his fiancee, Yvette Walker, an actress out of the Yale Drama School. Now if only Yvette weren’t really a call girl up to her neck in a scheme to fleece Herbie and leave him at the altar holding the bag….
The weightless style is Woods’, but the smartly engineered complications involving multiple malefactors who plot at serenely oblivious cross-purposes are right out of Hall’s stories about sad-sack private eye Stanley Hastings. Woods, who’s often mysteriously immune to plotting, may have found the perfect partner.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7352-1723-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
Taut and fraught with surprise twists, Hillier’s thriller is addictive.
“Free Abby Maddox, 2/10.” Carved into the back of a murdered prostitute, these words resurrect a violent story that everyone thought had ended.
Picking up where Creep (2010) left off, the latest from Hillier reassembles a cast of characters facing the aftermath of serial killer Ethan Wolfe’s death. Dubbed the Tell Tale Heart killer, Wolfe had seduced and tortured psychology professor and recovering sex addict Sheila Tao. Now that Wolfe is dead and his girlfriend, Abby Maddox, has been incarcerated for attacking Detective Jerry Isaac, Sheila believes she can rebuild her life. Retired from the force and estranged from his wife, Jerry struggles to regain his confidence after Maddox’s attack. The scar she left on his throat is simply the physical manifestation of the scars within his psyche. Suddenly, the wary peace is shattered, and Jerry’s partner calls him back to help with a murder case. The corpse bears a strong resemblance to Maddox, and the killer has strangled her with a zip tie. The message carved into her back prophesies nine more victims. Who is willing to kill for Maddox’s freedom? Twists and turns reveal a website devoted to freeing Maddox, a trash bag full of fan letters to Maddox and a mysterious young man hiring prostitutes online. Jerry isn’t quite ready to cope with this case, particularly when the only leads seem to lie in Maddox’s hands. Even more strange, Maddox wants to talk to Sheila. Luckily, Jerry has a new intern, Danny. Studying to become a criminologist, Danny is, of course, intrigued by the case. Her fresh-faced interest, energy and technological skills rejuvenate Jerry’s hunt. Yet as the kill count mounts, he has to begin to wonder: Is someone orchestrating everyone’s every move? The second book in this series leaves readers hungry for the next.
Taut and fraught with surprise twists, Hillier’s thriller is addictive.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6454-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
Graham Greene he's not. Not even John le Carre or Geoffrey Household. But Ken Follett is here with that particularly British tone of controlled, leisurely tension—you'll feel it on the very first page—that can transform a not-very-original spy plot into a sly gavotte that has you holding your breath as the dancers slowly come together. The familiar D-Day gimmick: only one man can ruin the secrecy of the Normandy landing—a top German undercover agent known as "The Needle" because of his deadly stiletto. But Follett immediately declares his independence from cliches: by luring us over to The Needle's point of view, forcing us to admire his ingenuity (even as he murders a harmless landlady and then his own confederate); by making three-dimensional fellows of the British intelligence men who must catch The Needle before he makes contact with a German submarine; and by dropping in the apparently extraneous story of a young, unhappy man and wife who've been living on an empty North Sea island ever since the husband lost his legs in a honeymoon car accident. Ah, but of course, we know that this couple will be linked to The Needle, and it's with satisfaction that we watch the spy being washed up, half dead, on that island in his attempt to reach a German ship. What then follows—the romance between The Needle and the lovestarved wife, their hideous and unwilling death-duel—is badly marred by explicit sex and explicit sentimentality that, like Follett's occasional anachronistic or heavyhanded fumbles, violate the tone and period feel. But perhaps it's just as well: if Follett's debut were flawless, he'd have nowhere to go. As it is, Eye of the Needle introduces a fresh if not especially distinctive voice in suspense—and is easily the best first novel in the espionage genre since The Day of the Jackal.
Pub Date: July 31, 1978
ISBN: 006074815X
Page Count: 370
Publisher: Arbor House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1978
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