Beguiling first fiction—part thriller and part rite of passage—about a deceptively undistinguished English innocent who cunningly outwits dangerous enemies and angry superiors to unmask villains and win the hand of a beautiful girl. Ackland, a former civil servant, effectively mines his own past to give this tale a nice gloss of authenticity. Guy Colchester, fresh out of college, is working at the Ministry of Exports in London simply because his father wants him to serve his country, and, since there's no war, the next best thing to soldiering that he can do is be a civil servant. But Guy is bored by the tortuous decision-making, buck-passing, and careerism. Meanwhile, his colleagues think he hasn't the right stuff to become one of them, but under duress, Guy, like many of his oft-told predecessors, begins to reveal surprising abilities. When he's approached by the elegant Mr. de la Fosse to work for what Guy believes is the British Secret Service, his decision to accept is clinched by meeting Julia, de la Fosse's lovely assistant. The Service wants him to provide them with documents recording what a British company—possibly a front for a chemical-weapons factory— is actually sending to a mining plant in the Middle East. Soon, Guy is delivering even more information just so that he can continue seeing Julia. But Guy isn't the only spy; someone is keeping an eye on the Minister himself, who's stayed too close to his old employers in a major bank. Spies abound, in fact, as Guy is nearly murdered by an Arab, meets the head of the real Secret Service, realizes he's been duped, and is accused of treason. All ends happily, of course, thanks to some quick thinking and bold action on Guy's part. A literate romp through the bureaucracy with plenty of danger and riveting excitement: a promising debut.
Pub Date: Nov. 15, 1997
ISBN: 0-575-06187-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Gollancz/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1997
The romantic doings of the likable characters are more interesting than the mediocre mystery.
A bike shop owner and her book club pals keep solving mysteries in ways that somehow don’t endear them to the police (Murder on Cape Cod, 2018, etc.).
Mackenzie Almeida, the proprietor of Mac’s Bikes in the touristy Cape Cod town of Westham, is dating Tim Brunelle, the caring and handsome owner of an artisanal bakery, who wants to get married and start a family. That’s not something independent neat freak Mac is ready to do. She enjoys living in her tiny house with Belle, her talkative parrot, for company. When Mac and her best friend, Gin, come across the dead body of wealthy Beverly Ruchart outside Gin’s taffy shop, Mac’s romantic problems get put on the back burner, especially since Gin is a suspect. She and her date, Eli Tubin, the widower of Beverly’s daughter, had attended a party at Beverly’s home only the night before. Beverly seems to have died from a heart attack, but an autopsy finds that she was poisoned with antifreeze, some of which has been planted in Gin’s garage. Of course Mac and her cohorts at the book club can’t resist a little sleuthing. They uncover several other plausible suspects: Beverly’s ne’er-do-well grandson, Ron, his Russian girlfriend, and his long-absent father, who has a police record. Although Beverly could be generous, she had a sharp tongue that made her plenty of enemies. Her interest in genealogy and reuniting long-lost parents and children endeared her to Wesley Farnham, for whom she found a son, but not so much to Farnham’s daughter, who misses being an only child. Although Mac turns her findings over to the police, she still attracts the killer’s notice and ends up owing her life to Belle.
The romantic doings of the likable characters are more interesting than the mediocre mystery.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4967-1508-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
Shalvis’ latest retains her spark and sizzle.
Piper Manning is determined to sell her family’s property so she can leave her hometown behind, but when her siblings come back with life-changing secrets and her sexy neighbor begins to feel like “The One,” she might have to redo her to-do list.
As children, Piper and her younger siblings, Gavin and Winnie, were sent to live with their grandparents in Wildstone, California, from the Congo after one of Gavin’s friends was killed. Their parents were supposed to meet them later but never made it. Piper wound up being more of a parent than her grandparents, though: “In the end, Piper had done all the raising. It’d taken forever, but now, finally, her brother and sister were off living their own lives.” Piper, the queen of the bullet journal, plans to fix up the family’s lakeside property her grandparents left the three siblings when they died. Selling it will enable her to study to be a physician’s assistant as she’s always wanted. However, just as the goal seems in sight, Gavin and Winnie come home, ostensibly for Piper’s 30th birthday, and then never leave. Turns out, Piper’s brother and sister have recently managed to get into a couple buckets of trouble, and they need some time to reevaluate their options. They aren’t willing to share their problems with Piper, though they’ve been completely open with each other. And Winnie, who’s pregnant, has been very open with Piper’s neighbor Emmitt Reid and his visiting son, Camden, since the baby’s father is Cam’s younger brother, Rowan, who died a few months earlier in a car accident. Everyone has issues to navigate, made more complicated by Gavin and Winnie’s swearing Cam to secrecy just as he and Piper try—and fail—to ignore their attraction to each other. Shalvis keeps the physical and emotional tension high, though the siblings’ refusal to share with Piper becomes tedious and starts to feel childish.
Shalvis’ latest retains her spark and sizzle.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-296139-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
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