Agencies and emissaries spanning the globe hope to thwart an assassination attempt on the president of the United States in the second novel featuring retired CIA agent Ike Blass (The Leningrad Affair, 2011).
British agency MI6 sends operatives to Madrid with an assignment to subvert a terrorist plot that’s already been initiated. One of the terrorists, Amin, is tracked to Cuba, where it is believed that a dying Fidel Castro’s power will soon shift to his brother, Gen. Raul Castro. It’s here in Cuba where many of the story’s players congregate: Blass enlisted to neutralize a Cuban training camp, Maria Lopez of MI6 with a vendetta, another CIA agent working covertly and Cuban exile Jesus Cantu foiling a double-cross. The author’s gleefully convoluted novel introduces characters at a rapid-fire pace, and as such, most partners don’t stay partners for long in ever-changing circumstances. Some of them even seem to disappear only to return at an integral moment, like Pedro, in the U.S. illegally (dubbing him an “exchange student”) and deported to Mexico. Blass is initially a supporting character in his own story, but he becomes the focus as he and Lopez keep their eyes on Amin before they ultimately turn toward one another. Amin, as the central villain, is more complex than his narrative counterpart, particularly with the occasional glimpses of his family’s catastrophic past. He proves charming with the ladies, an advantage when he can work it in his favor (using a woman as a means of gaining entrance to Mexico, en route to the U.S.) but simultaneously his greatest flaw, as the opposite sex tends to distract him from his operation. Blass may return in a future book, but any number of the other characters (whether or not that character makes it to the end), especially the composed, capable Jesus Cantu, could easily handle his or her own series. Story and characters that surprise and entertain on a multitude of levels will have readers drumming their fingers on Kindle screens awaiting Terry’s next novel.
Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2011
ISBN: 978-0983149743
Page Count: -
Publisher: eBooksTalkToMe
Review Posted Online: Dec. 30, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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