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GHOSTS OF HAVANA

Former government official Moss offers a lively, informed, and timely political novel about Cuba's future and America's role...

After Havana seizes the fishing boat of four Americans in Cuban waters and holds them captive, the U.S. State Department sends its ace crisis strategist Judd Ryker to the island on a mission that grows more and more mysterious.

Even in the wake of a historic thawing of relations between the U.S. and Cuba, Havana remains a thorn in Washington's side. In the aftermath of the boating incident, Florida Congresswoman Brenda Adelman-Zamora, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, calls for the U.S. to suspend diplomatic ties with Cuba and reimpose sanctions. The CIA's unnamed Deputy Director of Operations aims to fuel an insurrection in Cuba but has no clue who is in line to succeed the 86-year-old El Comrade Jefe (read: Raul Castro). The State Department, meanwhile, wants former academic Ryker and his Critical Response Unit, which expertly manipulates moments of crisis in America's favor, to influence Cuba's future. Even before Ryker lands in Cuba for an ultrasecret meeting with military intelligence chief Oswaldo Guerrero—the notorious "Diablo" known for ruining American schemes going back to the Bay of Pigs—Judd's CIA operative wife, Jessica, is in Florida investigating the boaters' shady backgrounds. The book's running gimmick is that husband and wife, who have found themselves at tactical odds in other countries, have promised never again to work on the same case in the same city. But here is Jessica, who's supposed to be vacationing with their kids, counting the lies she's telling Judd as she gets deeper into danger. Though their Mr. & Mrs. Smith act isn't always believable, it gives the book a lighter and breezier appeal than Moss' previous efforts, The Golden Hour (2015) and Minute Zero (2015).

Former government official Moss offers a lively, informed, and timely political novel about Cuba's future and America's role in it.

Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-399-17593-0

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: June 20, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016

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A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

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

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DARK MATTER

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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