A rough novel that’s as engrossing as it is bleak.
In Parr’s debut thriller, a 16-year-old seeks revenge in the grim and gritty London of the 1970s, where a wealthy secret society pulls the strings.
Neglected by his alcoholic mother, Jerry is brought up in a series of abusive, temporary homes. He grows up to be an intelligent but physically and mentally scarred teenager who feels morally bound to avenge the wrongs perpetrated against him. For example, he puts a teacher who beat him into a freezing marsh grave, and he burns down the house of the foster family who put him out on the street. After fellow street urchins assault and rob him, he force-feeds one of them a cocktail of drugs and robs him in kind. However, the cruelest people in the city operate behind the scenes: dirty cops and members of a secret society called the Firm, led by the aging, gout-riddled Sir Peter, a former British Intelligence operative. The Firm uses blackmail and murder to enrich themselves and includes the mantislike Vicar, who was one of Jerry’s worst abusers. Parr is adept at portraying his fictional world’s most unpleasant elements. Jerry, for example, is introduced to readers as a bawling, forgotten child left in his own filth—a heart-rending tableau that the author captures in all its grimy particulars. He uses this same attention to bring the flophouses and seedy clubs of ’70s London to life. His secondary characters are similarly well drawn; Jerry’s street-wise love interest, Scarlet, is as charmingly self-aware of her flaws as he is. A trio of schoolmates, introduced early on, are compelling in their banality, but they unfortunately disappear midnovel. Similarly, DI Jack Drummond and savvy Detective Constable Janice Morgan give law enforcement a human face, but they feel a little too separated from Jerry’s story. That said, there are worse things than leaving readers wanting more, and they’ll find it hard to leave Parr’s grim story behind.
A rough novel that’s as engrossing as it is bleak.Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-83820-511-9
Page Count: 286
Publisher: Waggabolly
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Intrigue, murder, and vengeance make for a darkly enjoyable read.
A woman’s life takes a stunning turn and a wall comes tumbling down in this tense Cold War spy drama.
In Berlin in 1989, the wall is about to crumble, and Anne Simpson’s husband, Stefan Koehler, goes missing. She is a translator working with refugees from the communist bloc, and he is a piano tuner who travels around Europe with orchestras. Or so he claims. German intelligence service the BND and America’s CIA bring her in for questioning, wrongly thinking she’s protecting him. Soon she begins to learn more about Stefan, whom she had met in the Netherlands a few years ago. She realizes he’s a “gregarious musician with easy charm who collected friends like a beachcomber collects shells, keeping a few, discarding most.” Police find his wallet in a canal and his prized zither in nearby bushes but not his body. Has he been murdered? What’s going on? And why does the BND care? If Stefan is alive, he’s in deep trouble, because he’s believed to be working for the Stasi. She’s told “the dead have a way of showing up. It is only the living who hide.” And she’s quite believable when she wonders, “Can you grieve for someone who betrayed you?” Smart and observant, she notes that the reaction by one of her interrogators is “as false as his toupee. Obvious, uncalled for, and easily put on.” Lurking behind the scenes is the Matchmaker, who specializes in finding women—“American. Divorced. Unhappy,” and possibly having access to Western secrets—who will fall for one of his Romeos. Anne is the perfect fit. “The matchmaker turned love into tradecraft,” a CIA agent tells her. But espionage is an amoral business where duty trumps decency, and “deploring the morality of spies is like deploring violence in boxers.” It’s a sentiment John le Carré would have endorsed, but Anne may have the final word.
Intrigue, murder, and vengeance make for a darkly enjoyable read.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64313-865-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pegasus Crime
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
A weird, wild ride.
Celebrity scandal and a haunted lake drive the narrative in this bestselling author’s latest serving of subtly ironic suspense.
Sager’s debut, Final Girls (2017), was fun and beautifully crafted. His most recent novels—Home Before Dark (2020) and Survive the Night (2021) —have been fun and a bit rickety. His new novel fits that mold. Narrator Casey Fletcher grew up watching her mother dazzle audiences, and then she became an actor herself. While she never achieves the “America’s sweetheart” status her mother enjoyed, Casey makes a career out of bit parts in movies and on TV and meatier parts onstage. Then the death of her husband sends her into an alcoholic spiral that ends with her getting fired from a Broadway play. When paparazzi document her substance abuse, her mother exiles her to the family retreat in Vermont. Casey has a dry, droll perspective that persists until circumstances overwhelm her, and if you’re getting a Carrie Fisher vibe from Casey Fletcher, that is almost certainly not an accident. Once in Vermont, she passes the time drinking bourbon and watching the former supermodel and the tech mogul who live across the lake through a pair of binoculars. Casey befriends Katherine Royce after rescuing her when she almost drowns and soon concludes that all is not well in Katherine and Tom’s marriage. Then Katherine disappears….It would be unfair to say too much about what happens next, but creepy coincidences start piling up, and eventually, Casey has to face the possibility that maybe some of the eerie legends about Lake Greene might have some truth to them. Sager certainly delivers a lot of twists, and he ventures into what is, for him, new territory. Are there some things that don’t quite add up at the end? Maybe, but asking that question does nothing but spoil a highly entertaining read.
A weird, wild ride.Pub Date: June 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-18319-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
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