A skillful blend of political savvy, international espionage, and high drama.
A covert operation of American and Japanese forces plans to extract an engineer with valuable intelligence from North Korea in this novel.
Discovering a boat smuggling drugs off the coast of the Noto Peninsula, the Japanese Coast Guard pursues the vessel. The craft discharges sophisticated anti-ship missiles, inadvertently killing a fisherman and his young daughter. Wilson Bennett, an analyst for the U.S. National Security Council, believes there’s a possibility that the missiles are traceable to North Korea, an indication that the country has made considerable technological progress. In addition, the exportation of that technology into Japan, used in an attack on that nation’s military personnel, would constitute an act of war. Meanwhile, Bennett learns from a humanitarian group operating an underground transport of illicit supplies—including Bibles—into North Korea that an engineer, Pyong Hae Han, with access to highly classified information about the government’s progress developing a nuclear missile, is looking to defect. But that kind of exfiltration is highly problematic: First, an engineer working on such a secretive project would never be allowed to leave the country, which means his rescuers will have to cross the North Korean border. In addition, he won’t depart without his family, which includes a child stricken with muscular dystrophy. To further complicate matters, Bennett confesses that none of the engineer’s story—including his identity—is confirmable. Bennett teams up with Trinh Archer—a U.S. diplomat with an expertise in organized crime and drug smuggling—to plan the joint operation of American and Japanese troops. Archer’s life is endangered when the crime boss overseeing the smuggling operation—Takada Kano—decides the diplomat’s investigation threatens his business. Radcliffe (Goraiko: Japan’s National Security in an Era of Asymmetric Threats, 2014, etc.) is astonishingly knowledgeable about a matrix of subjects around which the novel revolves: Asian regional affairs, Japanese politics and culture, military technology, and the murky world of global spying. This is a stunningly well-researched tale. And while the story is both dense and complex, the author’s prose is mercifully transparent, and the plot is structured in a way that maximizes clarity. In addition, the drama is simply gripping, and Radcliffe provides a fascinating portal into the most reclusive regime in the world, and the macabre deprivations of even its more privileged citizens. And as engrossing and action-packed as the story is, the author never skimps on the meaningful construction of his characters. Bennett emerges as a multifaceted protagonist, a hardened analyst who has seen the ugly depths of human depravity but still retains his idealistic commitments, presumably the vestigial influence of his parents, who worked as missionaries in Asia. Radcliffe occasionally succumbs to the charms of narrative formulas—Archer establishes her toughness by physically punishing a coarse American soldier. When she verbally threatens his friends, one responds: “Holy shit lady, you’re damn right we won’t touch you!” The depiction of the Japanese criminal underworld is susceptible to similar tropes, with shopworn fictional devices ostensibly used to assist the lazier reader. Nonetheless, this book is an immersive and educational experience.
A skillful blend of political savvy, international espionage, and high drama.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-983491-23-8
Page Count: 432
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Schneider’s debut enlivens the police procedural with offbeat characters and an appealingly complex hero.
Hollywood detectives catch the strange case of a brutally burned body.
Detective Tully Jarsdel is a former academic, leading his partner, Morales, to call him Professor. When he fights his way through multiple news crews to reach a corpse one day, it's unlike any he’s ever seen. The body is twisted, partially ravaged, and burned so badly it’s unrecognizable. Jarsdel and Morales intensely question Dustin Sparks, the horror-movie special-effects expert who found the body. He eventually admits that he saw the body being dumped from a van, but his addiction to OxyContin makes him a compromised witness. While waiting for DNA results, Jarsdel and Morales watch missing persons reports closely. An odd red disk glued to the victim’s palm turns out to be a 1996 quarter painted red: the case’s first clue, albeit a murky one. DNA connects the victim to grizzled convict Lawrence Wolin, who identifies the man as his brother. The pieces of Grant Wolin’s life come together via interviews prompted by a search of his dirty apartment. He sold jars of “genuine Hollywood dirt” on the street, smoked marijuana occasionally, and was apparently asexual. A dinner scene at the home of Jarsdel’s scholarly parents provides insight into his psyche and his sense of isolation. Though he fits in with neither the gritty world of police work nor the ivory tower of academia, he has a passion for justice.
Schneider’s debut enlivens the police procedural with offbeat characters and an appealingly complex hero.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4926-8444-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Light on surprises and character development, this tepid thriller will have most astute readers correctly guessing the...
An accident forces a man to return to his small Iowa hometown and confront violent secrets from his past, ones he’s kept hidden from his wife.
Sarah Quinlan thought she knew everything about her husband, Jack: an accident killed his parents when he was 15 so he left Penny Gate, Iowa, and has only been back once. But when the couple gets news that Jack’s beloved aunt Julia, who raised Jack and his younger sister, Amy, after their parents’ deaths, is gravely injured in a fall, the prodigal son returns. Gudenkauf (Little Mercies, 2014, etc.) makes it clear from the start that nothing should be taken at face value, not Jack’s story about his parents (his mother was actually bludgeoned to death, and his father, now MIA, was the prime suspect) or the seemingly idyllic small-town atmosphere. This, however, does little to heighten the suspense as advice columnist Sarah takes on the role of amateur detective in sniffing out Quinlan family secrets past and present. Through her we meet Jack’s terse cousin Dean and his too-perfect wife, Celia, along with Julia’s husband, Hal, who became like a father to Jack in the wake of his own family tragedy, and Amy, who couldn’t be more stereotypically “troubled.” Jack and Amy’s tragic past, which becomes the central mystery of the plot once Sarah figures out that her husband has been lying to her for two decades, is tied to Julia’s not-so-accidental fall, but only for the purposes of a neatly sewn-up plot.
Light on surprises and character development, this tepid thriller will have most astute readers correctly guessing the ending halfway through.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7783-1865-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harlequin MIRA
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2015
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