Redoubtable Stone not only beds the best women and corrals the best lifestyle perks but succeeds so well in his job that...
Stone Barrington (Lucid Intervals, 2010, etc.) fights to protect a Hollywood studio from a takeover bid that goes way beyond hostile.
Arrington Calder, the most durable of Stone’s former lovers, wants the father of her son to come to La-La-Land to vote the shares in Centurion Studios her late husband, six-time Oscar-winning star Vance Calder, left her. By the time Stone and his NYPD ex-partner, Lt. Dino Bacchetti, land in L.A., Arrington’s changed her mind, in the first of many plot complications that go nowhere. As Stone settles into Arrington’s guest house and the battle lines form, it becomes clear that investor Terry Prince’s bid to purchase a controlling interest in Centurion from Arrington and its other leading shareholders—ancient Centurion CEO Rick Barron, Hollywood heiress Jennifer Harris and Jim Long, currently sitting in jail accused of conspiring to murder Santa Fe attorney Ed Eagle (Santa Fe Edge, 2010, etc.)—is seriously bad news. For one thing, Terry’s plan to build a hotel on Centurion’s land would gut the studio. For another, his money is coming from Mexican and Colombian drug lords. Finally, his determination to close the deal crosses the line to murder, as Jennifer Harris discovers to her sorrow. Remaining cool throughout (his reaction when his Mercedes is blown up: “I guess we’d better take the Bentley”), Stone helps Centurion fend off this unwanted suitor while he thwarts equally aggressive subplots from Terry’s beautiful, frigid executive assistant Carolyn Blaine and Ed Eagle’s homicidally resourceful ex-wife.
Redoubtable Stone not only beds the best women and corrals the best lifestyle perks but succeeds so well in his job that he’s rewarded with a full partnership in his law firm and a large share of control over Centurion himself. What a guy.Pub Date: April 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-399-15736-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2011
A tour de force that thickens its thriller plot with a razor-sharp view of its heroine’s unreliable but perceptive mind.
Barr takes a break from her bestselling series about National Park Ranger Anna Pigeon (Boar Island, 2016, etc.) for a one-of-a-kind stand-alone that follows the adventures of a woman committed to a Memory Care Unit for dementia as she fights to claw back her life.
There’s a lot of stuff Rose Dennis doesn’t know. She doesn’t know when and how she got out of Longwood or when and how she arrived there in the first place. She’s surprised and pained when people remind her that although she grew up in New Orleans, she moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, with Harley, her husband of 15 years, and that he’s died. At one point she’s not even sure whether she’s 68 years old or 103. After a pair of orderlies hustle her back to Longwood, however, Rose resolves that it’s the medications she’s being fed that are sapping her powers of mind and will and vows to stop taking them and escape again, this time for keeps. Fortunately, her second attempt takes her to the home of Melanie Dennis, Harley’s levelheaded, resourceful 13-year-old granddaughter, who’s more than ready to do whatever it takes to keep Gigi, as she calls Rose, two steps ahead of her pursuers. Unfortunately, one of those pursuers, a shadowy man armed with a knife, breaks into the old house where Rose is hiding out and tries to kill her. More adventures follow, some of them involving Rose’s hermitlike sister, Marion Bliss, who offers all the help a life spent online allows, some involving Karen Black, the hapless Longwood nurse Rose gets the better of on three separate occasions. It’s both a nuisance and a personal triumph when the media get hold of Rose’s story and label her “Gun Granny.”
A tour de force that thickens its thriller plot with a razor-sharp view of its heroine’s unreliable but perceptive mind.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-20713-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
This is fast-paced, nonstop fun. Cussler fans will gobble it up.
Rumors of lost Egyptian treasure spark high adventure in this 17th in the NUMA series featuring oceanographer Kurt Austin and his crew (Sea of Greed, 2018, etc.).
Over 3,000 years ago, grave robbers sail away with loot from a pharaoh’s tomb. In 1927, Jake Melbourne and his plane disappear in his attempt at a trans-Atlantic flight. In the present day, arms merchants known as the Bloodstone Group have taken to stealing antiquities. They are looking for a “treasure both vast and glorious” that hieroglyphics say was shipped down the Nile and out of Egypt, perhaps even west across the Atlantic. (Holy scurvy! That must’ve been a lot of hard rowing!) The criminals are known to MI5 as “very dangerous people" and "merchants selling death.” Perfectly willing to kill everyone in their way, they are aided by mechanical crows and Fydor and Xandra, nasty sibling assassins jointly called the Toymaker. Such are the foes faced by Austin and his team from the National Underwater and Marine Agency. Of course, Austin has no interest in profit; he will gladly leave the ancient riches wherever they are. Action arrives early and often, and the failed pre-Lindbergh flight fits in neatly. Cussler and Brown concoct a nifty plot with disparate, sometimes over-the-top twists that will make even hardcore adventure fans say “Wow!” Expect claustrophobic gunfights, aerial combat, a life-threatening flood, messages from the dead, coffins of gold—and a vintage classic car, because why not? “We’re going to steal the greatest deposit of Egyptian treasure the world has ever known,” brags the evil mastermind. But he’ll have to climb over the series hero’s dead body first, which—no plot spoiler here—ain’t gonna happen.
This is fast-paced, nonstop fun. Cussler fans will gobble it up.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-08308-6
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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