The prolific Fleming (Hours of Gladness, 1999, etc.) has been around for a while, of course, but this manifestation of him...
Historical set during the Revolutionary War—in an America not so beautiful.
It’s winter, and what remains of the rebel army is bivouacked in New Jersey, close to Morristown. And close to mutiny. There are reasons: the soldiers are hungry and cold, their clothes in tatters. Routinely, they die from exposure, dysentery, and a variety of other pernicious diseases. They also haven’t been paid in months, and desertions are a daily occurrence. Meanwhile, the Continental Congress, convened in Philadelphia to almost no purpose, engages in a kind of fratricidal war within a war, southern aristocrats and Yankee entrepreneurs sniping and carping at each other, and all of them sneering at George Washington—never mind that he’s the glue that keeps their revolution from flying apart. Four years have passed since the headiness of Lexington and Concord. Apathy, cupidity, and defeatism are now rampant, blotting anything good from Fleming’s bleak canvas. Four characters act out most of the dismal drama, all of them gripped by self-hatred and some form of despair: the degraded Major Beckford, chief of British intelligence, matched by the embittered Major Stallworth, his opposite number. Ruthlessly exploited by these cynical spymasters are the beautiful half-Jew, half-black Flora Kuyper, and the disillusioned clergyman Caleb Chandler—the former the unwilling tool of the British; the latter, equally reluctant, pressed into service by the Americans. Scruples have long since become excess baggage; only victory matters, justifying all means that end, a position even Washington accepts. With blackmail, torture and murder commonplace, both armies battle ingloriously, leaving a rooting interest hard to come by.
The prolific Fleming (Hours of Gladness, 1999, etc.) has been around for a while, of course, but this manifestation of him may surprise his readers: much better prose, significantly darker view.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-312-87743-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that...
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
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.
Coulter’s treasured FBI agents take on two cases marked by danger and personal involvement.
Dillon Savitch and his wife, Lacey Sherlock, have special abilities that have served them well in law enforcement (Paradox, 2018, etc.). But that doesn't prevent Sherlock’s car from hitting a running man after having been struck by a speeding SUV that runs a red light. The runner, though clearly injured, continues on his way and disappears. Not so the SUV driver, a security engineer for the Bexholt Group, which has ties to government agencies. Sherlock’s own concussion causes memory loss so severe that she doesn’t recognize Savitch or remember their son, Sean. The whole incident seems more suspicious when a blood test from the splatter of the man Sherlock hit reveals that he’s Justice Cummings, an analyst for the CIA. The agency’s refusal to cooperate makes Savitch certain that Bexholt is involved in a deep-laid plot. Meanwhile, Special Agent Griffin Hammersmith is visiting friends who run a cafe in the touristy Virginia town of Gaffers Ridge. Hammersmith, who has psychic abilities, is taken aback when he hears in his mind a woman’s cry for help. Reporter Carson DeSilva, who came to the area to interview a Nobel Prize winner, also has psychic abilities, and she overhears the thoughts of Rafer Bodine, a young man who has apparently kidnapped and possibly murdered three teenage girls. Unluckily, she blurts out her thoughts, and she’s snatched and tied up in a cellar by Bodine. Bodine may be a killer, but he’s also the nephew of the sheriff and the son of the local bigwig. So the sheriff arrests Hammersmith and refuses to accept his FBI credentials. Bodine's mother has psychic powers strong enough to kill, but she meets her match in Hammersmith, DeSilva, Savitch, and Sherlock.
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.Pub Date: July 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9365-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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