A meaty, entertaining thriller, sometimes predictable, more often not—just the thing for fans of Ludlum, Trevanian and...
From Bell (Nick of Time, 2008, etc.), a James Bondish adventure brought up to date with Middle Eastern terrorists, Russian baddies and assorted other denizens of evil empires around the world.
Alex Hawke is a modern type, but not so modern that he’s given up smoking—or, even if he does read Susan Sontag, that he’s become new-age sensitive. He’s a reader and a thinker, a veteran of British intelligence and a counterterrorism expert of renown. He also bears the burdens of grief. As Bell tells us in a slightly hamfisted bit of exposition, Alex’s parents had been killed “at the hands of drug pirates when the boy was but seven” (which, doing the numbers, would put those drug pirates well ahead of the curve). To top that off, Alex’s true love has fallen victim to the endless struggle between good and evil—or, as he puts it: “My heart’s in the grave.” By rights he should be a basket case, but then comes a call from old pal Prince Charles (yes, that Prince Charles), who informs him that the bloke or blokes who did in his uncle Dickie Mountbatten are back, threatening to repeat their dastardly acts on Charles and his progeny. The plot thickens, involving a small army of walk-on characters, some from real life (think Princess Di and Dodi Fayed) and some from an ample supply of stock characters (for one, an all-wise, ever-patient manservant). Though many genre conventions are well in place, Bell has fun with his tale, allowing Hawke enough opportunities for mayhem and carnage as to embarrass the murderous James Bond of Quantum of Solace—as when, for instance, he dispatches a terrorist, “little more than a boy,” by slicing him apart with an assault knife. That’s exactly in character, and exactly what the situation called for.
A meaty, entertaining thriller, sometimes predictable, more often not—just the thing for fans of Ludlum, Trevanian and Fleming.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-185929-8
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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