A competent, if unambitious, political thriller.
An FBI agent is forced to go underground after discovering a plot to blow up Washington, D.C., in Branam’s latest entry in his Wolfe Adventure series.
Thomas Wolfe is the assistant director of the FBI’s Critical Incident Response Group, and he has knowledge of a terrorist plot. A cabal of billionaires called the Order is planning to stage a coup, the first stage of which involves detonating a nuclear bomb during the president’s State of the Union address. For some reason, Tom’s commanders have ordered him to back off the investigation, and when he presents his findings to the upper echelons of the government intelligence hierarchy, he’s met with ridicule. They suspend him from the bureau, and soon, federal marshals try to arrest him “for suspicion of murder, espionage, acts of terrorism, and sedition.”He avoids being taken into custody, but now he’s a high-profile fugitive pursued by all the powers of the government: “The Order has created a shadow state,” his former boss warns him, “by systematically placing people in key positions throughout the government—some in very high positions.” To prevent the impending attack, Tom needs to find and free his brother, John Wolfe, a master spy who’s being held at a blackout facility for his own attempts to bring down the Order. That will be no easy feat, especially with a Navy SEAL–turned-assassin hot on his trail. Branam’s novel is fast-paced and action-packed from the first scene. However, nearly every element—the descriptions, the characters, the explanations—rises merely to the level of functional and not one inch higher. This simplicity sometimes leads to rather cartoonish moments, as when U.S. Sen. Fetterson, the Order’s leader, lovingly caresses the nuclear bomb’s control box and thinks, “Soon I will be president for life!” There are numerous allusions to previous books in the Wolfe series, but readers will be able to make their way through this one fine without having read the others. Those who enjoy escapist fare, centered on a James Bond–style villain blowing up a city with a nuke, will largely find themselves content with this latest offering.
A competent, if unambitious, political thriller.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4582-2261-9
Page Count: 380
Publisher: AbbottPress
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Squeamish readers will find this isn’t their cup of tea.
Dexter meets Killing Eve in Wallace’s dark comic thriller debut.
While accepting condolences following her father’s funeral, 30-something narrator Claire receives an email saying that one of her paintings is a finalist for a prize. But her joy is short-circuited the next morning when she learns in a second apologetic note that the initial email had been sent to the wrong Claire. The sender, Lucas Kane, is “terribly, terribly sorry” for his mistake. Claire, torn between her anger and suicidal thoughts, has doubts about his sincerity and stalks him to a London pub, where his fate is sealed: “I stare at Lucas Kane in real life, and within moments I know. He doesn’t look sorry.” She dispatches and buries Lucas in her back garden, but this crime does not go unnoticed. Proud of her meticulous standards as a serial killer, Claire wonders if her grief for her father is making her reckless as she seeks to identify the blackmailer among the members of her weekly bereavement support group. The female serial killer as antihero is a growing subgenre (see Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer, 2018), and Wallace’s sociopathic protagonist is a mordantly amusing addition; the tool she uses to interact with ordinary people while hiding her homicidal nature is especially sardonic: “Whenever I’m unsure of how I’m expected to respond, I use a cliché. Even if I’m not sure what it means, even if I use it incorrectly, no one ever seems to mind.” The well-written storyline tackles some tough subjects—dementia, elder abuse, and parental cruelty—but the convoluted plot starts to drag at the halfway point. Given the lack of empathy in Claire’s narration, most of the characters come across as not very likable, and the reader tires of her sneering contempt.
Squeamish readers will find this isn’t their cup of tea.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780143136170
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
Small-town claustrophobia and intimacies alike propel this twist-filled psychological thriller.
The loss of her police officer father and the discovery of an abandoned car in a local lake raise chilling questions regarding a young woman’s family history.
When Hazel Sharp returns to her hometown of Mirror Lake, North Carolina, for her father’s memorial, she and the other townspeople are confronted by a challenging double whammy: As they’re grieving the loss of beloved longtime police officer Detective Perry Holt, a disturbing sight appears in the lake, whose waterline is receding because of an ongoing drought—an old, unidentifiable car, which has likely been lurking there for years. Hazel temporarily leaves her Charlotte-based building-renovation business in the capable hands of her partners and reconnects with her brothers, Caden and Gage; her Uncle Roy; her old fling and neighbor, Nico; and her schoolfriend, Jamie, now a mother and married to Caden. Tiny, relentless suspicions rise to the metaphorical surface along with that waterlogged vehicle: There have been a slew of minor break-ins; two people go missing; and then, a second abandoned car is discovered. The novel digs deeper into Hazel’s family history—her father was a widow when he married Hazel’s mother, who later left the family, absconding with money and jewels—and Miranda, a consummate professional when it comes to exposing the small community tensions that naturally arise when people live in close proximity for generations, exposes revelation after twisty revelation: “Everything mattered disproportionately in a small town. Your success, but also your failure. Everyone knows might as well have been our town motto.”
Small-town claustrophobia and intimacies alike propel this twist-filled psychological thriller.Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781668010440
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Marysue Rucci Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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