An intelligent account of the political chaos in Mali that wallows in a tone of amoral coldness.
In Thorpe’s thriller, an American academic in search of a rare manuscript in Mali is suddenly entangled in a civil war.
In 2012,an unnamed college professor from the University of California, Berkeley, travels to Mali, partly as a matter of scholarly interest and partly to partake of the services of local sex workers. Also, he works for a manuscript collector named Foraes-Muriat, and he hopes to make enough money from their collaboration to help his soon-to-be ex-wife start anew in Tucson, Arizona, and pay his daughter’s college tuition. However, Mali becomes increasingly dangerous as war erupts; Tuareg and Arab Muslim jihadis declare their independence from the government in the quest to establish their own theocracy. As the violence escalates, particularly in the northern part of the country, the French military moves in. Despite the gathering volatility, Foraes-Muriat convinces the professor to travel north to procure an authentic copy of the Tarikh al fattash, a manuscript that promises to be of revolutionary significance. Lured by money, the professor accepts despite the danger he’ll surely face, and he comes to have doubts about Foraes-Muriat’s true intentions—a predicament that forces him to confront the thorny question of whether he’s a scholar working to preserve a culture or a colonialist thief. Over the course of the novel, Thorpe astutely depicts the complex political and cultural contours of Mali. Also, with unflinching bluntness, he describes the dissolution of the professor, who sets his sights on a new life with Molly, one of his students who’s more than 30 years his junior. However, the overall bleakness of the novel, which presents an unremitting portrayal of a dark nihilism, finally becomes exhausting, and the conclusion is less a denouement than a simple terminus. In the end, many readers may not feel that the novel’s artistic and intellectual offerings compensate for its moral austerity.
An intelligent account of the political chaos in Mali that wallows in a tone of amoral coldness.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2022
ISBN: 979-8405046662
Page Count: 298
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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