Action junkies will gobble this up.
Bentley’s first Mitch Rapp thriller in the series begun by the late Vince Flynn and continued by Kyle Mills.
In 2011, saboteurs have blown up an Iranian nuclear facility, and Iran swears vengeance. Against whom, they don’t know yet. The head of Iranian intelligence, Azad Ashani, is dying of cancer and wants to both prevent a calamitous war and protect his family. But he sees his only chance as making a deal with the devil: "Malikul Mawt. The Angel of Death." Mitch Rapp. Mitch surely merits that sobriquet, yet the author makes clear that the CIA operative is “neither a sociopath nor a troubled soul” but more like a plumber just doing his job, unclogging drains. Lots of drains. “Mitch was created to hunt his nation’s enemies on their turf,” that’s all. Over the nearly two dozen books in the series, he’s killed enough bad guys to fill a small phone book. His persona is a bit over the crest of believability: “Managing Rapp wasn’t so much riding a bridleless mustang as trying to surf a tsunami.” “The man seemed born to kill terrorists in the same way in which Eddie Van Halen had been born to play guitar.” And to borrow a phrase, he jumps the shark when he plunges headfirst down a waterfall. But hey, what’s a hero for? He works in coordination with Army Rangers to “capture or kill” a high-value target—Osama bin Laden—over the Pakistani border in Abbottabad. The action hardly ever lets up, so Rapp’s legion of readers will find plenty to worry about—and enjoy. Author Bentley has successfully spun yarns in the Tom Clancy universe, and here he moves smoothly into Vince Flynn’s. Their writing styles and that of Kyle Mills are indistinguishable, as if they could slip into each other’s skins. There’s even a passing nod to Mark Greaney’s Gray Man, another plague on the world’s bad guys.
Action junkies will gobble this up.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9781668045831
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Emily Bestler/Atria
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.
Dead bodies turn up in the first sentence of the prologue in McFadden’s latest domestic thriller.
The mystery of who died is at the pulsating heart of this propulsive tale. As Chapter 1 begins, Naomi arrives home to find the locks changed on the front door of the gorgeous home she shares with her husband, Jeremy, and their 5-year-old son, Teddy. Jeremy steps out the front door and convinces Naomi to move out while he has their home renovated, a plan Naomi knows nothing about. It’s all a ruse, though, as the next day Jeremy tells her he wants a divorce. Naomi is shellshocked and soon discovers that Jeremy is having an affair with Veronica, a beautiful younger woman. What seems at first like a stereotypical story about a man who leaves his wife turns into something else when Naomi decides she’ll do anything to get Veronica away from Jeremy and Teddy, and Veronica decides to fight for what she thinks she deserves. Fans of stalker novels will cringe with delight as creepy things start to happen. Teddy’s stuffed elephant, a gift from Veronica, is found impaled on a kitchen knife; Naomi suspects Jeremy is gaslighting her and that Veronica tried to poison her. A weird confrontation among Jeremy, Veronica, and Naomi at Teddy’s birthday party, to which Naomi shows up uninvited, is priceless. There are three main characters, and any or all of them may be unreliable narrators. Packing the plot with dark, gasp-inducing twists, McFadden outdoes herself in a story about how highly emotional people engage in risky behavior to get what they want—but in this novel, for better or worse, not everyone will survive.
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249631
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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