A Scandinavian Wicker Man without the atmosphere.
Max Fjellanger returns to Norway for the funeral of an old friend and finds himself immersed in a 30-year-old murder case in Sundstøl’s (The Ravens, 2015, etc.) latest.
As young policemen in Eidsborg, Max Fjellanger and Knut Abrahamsen investigated a missing person case that was never solved; shortly afterward, Max left the police force and moved to America, where he became a private investigator and married Ann. He and Knut did not keep in touch, but when he hears about his old friend’s death, he impulsively returns to Norway for the funeral and confronts memories of the past. Knut’s death, ruled a suicide at first, seems suspicious, as does the recent disappearance of a young woman who was researching an old stave church and its wooden saint. The missing man from 30 years ago also had a scholarly interest in that church and its ritual traditions. Assuming this is no coincidence, Max teams up with a librarian named Tirill to uncover the truth behind these disappearances and Knut’s death. Rumors suggest that some members of the church community may be conducting their own, more pagan rituals connected to the summer solstice. Max and Tirill must be careful whom they trust, because some people are clearly willing to kill to protect their centuries-old secret. There is a clever plot here, and Max and Tirill are an engaging duo, but the novel lacks emotional depth. Most of the characters just don’t seem complex enough to drive the action-packed plot, and this leaves many scenes feeling flat. Though the novel moves somewhat slowly, the climax manages to feel rushed and lacks full explanation and development. The connection between early Christianity and paganism, while not new, could have been more thoroughly explored to add complexity and resonance.
A Scandinavian Wicker Man without the atmosphere.Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5179-0280-3
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Univ. of Minnesota
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
A satisfying puzzler, one to shelve alongside le Carré, Forsyth, and other masters of foreign intrigue.
“It is a dangerous time to be alive.” Indeed, as this fast-paced thriller by seasoned mysterian Pavone (The Travelers, 2016, etc.) proves.
A siren wails in Paris, a once-rare sound often heard in these times of terror. It’s gone off because a jihadi has strapped a bomb to himself and is standing in front of the Louvre, “in the epicenter of Western civilization,” waiting for his moment. But is he a jihadi? Who’s put him up to this dastardly deed, and why? That’s for Kate Moore, deep-cover CIA agent, “sidewalk-swimming in a sea of expat moms,” to suss out. Kate lives in a shadow world, so hidden away that even her hedge-fund-master husband doesn’t have a clue about what she does: “Dexter has been forced to accept that she’s entitled to her secrets,” Pavone writes, adding, “He’s had plenty of his own.” Indeed, and in the shadowy parallel world of speculative finance, he’s teamed up with a fast-living entrepreneur who wants nothing more than to become superrich and run off with his “assistant-concubine.” Hunter Forsyth is about to announce a huge deal, but suddenly he’s disappeared, whisked away by shadowy people who, by the thin strings of suspense, have something to do with that bomb across town. So does a vengeful young mom, strapped to a useless husband and bent on payback for a long-ago slight. All this is red meat to Kate, who’s tired of the domestic life, no matter how much a sham, and is happier than a clam when “running her network of journalists, bloggers, influencers, as well as drug dealers, thieves, prostitutes, and cops, plus diplomats and soldiers, maitre d’s and concierges and bartenders and shopkeepers.” With all those players, mercenaries, and assorted bad guys thrown into the mix, you just know that the storyline is going to be knotty, and it resolves in a messy spatter of violence that’s trademark Pavone and decidedly not for the squeamish.
A satisfying puzzler, one to shelve alongside le Carré, Forsyth, and other masters of foreign intrigue.Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6150-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
Virginia Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta (Cruel and Unusual, 1993, etc.) has given up smoking and strayed far enough from her high-pressure office to act as a consulting profiler for the FBI, but her nerves are just as frayed at Quantico, especially since her rebellious niece Lucy is a computer-whiz trainee for the Engineering Research Facility down the hall. Scarpetta's latest case is ugly even by her standards: the North Carolina sex murder of Emily Steiner, 11, whose forensics are so contradictory that Scarpetta wants to exhume her for a second autopsy. Before she can do so, North Carolina Bureau investigator Max Ferguson, returning home from Quantico, dies, apparently of autoerotic asphyxia, and his local contact winds up in the hospital with a heart attack. Scarpetta scurries to work out how and why Temple Gault, an apparent serial killer who's the leading suspect in Emily's murder, might have killed Ferguson—and what to make of her gruesome discovery in Ferguson's freezer. No sooner has she finished the grisly re-examination of Emily, than word comes from Quantico that Lucy's sneaked into an unauthorized area after hours and is getting washed out of the program. Scarpetta's two nightmares come together with a crash—a car crash that sends Lucy to the hospital and Scarpetta out to the field to run forensics on her own automobile. As always, tension is ratcheted up, rather unconvincingly, by plots whose interconnection is never quite clear and by the constant friction between Scarpetta and her niece; her sister; her FBI lover, Benton Wesley; her boorish buddy, Capt. Pete Marino; and Emily's mother, with whom Marino is having an affair. But beneath the welter of quarrels and coincidences is as insidious a study of evil as Cornwell has turned in. (Literary Guild main selection)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-684-19597-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
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