Krueger, author of the Cork O’Connor mystery series (Purgatory Ridge, 2001, etc.), keeps his complex plot chugging along on...
Above-average suspenser about a stand-up Secret Service agent who falls for FLOTUS.
First Lady of the United States, that is, in case your Beltway Buzz-worder hasn’t been updated recently: in this case, the beautiful, bright, terribly troubled Kathleen Jorgenson Dixon. The thing is that Kate’s lost confidence in her husband. Clay Dixon, former pro-football star, came to the presidency imbued with a heroic sense of mission too soon squandered by the exigencies of practical politics. Kate deplores this, considers it a form of betrayal, insists to Clay that he’s surrounded himself with egregious opportunists, not the least of whom is his own unprincipled father, the sinister senior senator from Colorado. So serious is the rift between FLOTUS and POTUS that Kate has moved from the connubial quarters to the Lincoln Bedroom. “I used to sleep in a great man’s bed,” she tells Clay bitterly. “I want to remember what that was like.” Then suddenly, back in Minnesota, Kate’s father suffers a mysterious accident. Or was it? Secret Service Agent Bo Thorsen—brave, resourceful, smitten—doesn’t think so. He’s become convinced that Kate’s been lured home because someone—a diabolically clever and unequivocally lethal someone—wants her more accessible: it’s a trap, in other words. No one believes him, except Kate, who trusts him on sight and whose feeling for him no doubt transcends what is seemly, though both behave with admirable and honorable restraint. So who wants to murder an extremely popular First Lady? Is she the target of highly placed conspirators, seeking to forestall, at any cost, the negative impact of a divorced president? Or is the villain a more personal bête noire, a nightmarish figure out of Kate’s own long-ago, not a whit less deadly for being half-forgotten?
Krueger, author of the Cork O’Connor mystery series (Purgatory Ridge, 2001, etc.), keeps his complex plot chugging along on track until an overwrought and overlong last act derails it.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-7434-4584-8
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2002
The plot, like so many of Doc’s recent adventures, tends to wind down rather than up, but a good time is had by all.
Two distinct sets of chickens come home to roost for Sanibel Island marine biologist Dr. Marion Ford and his improbably wealthy beach-bum pal Tomlinson (Caribbean Rim, 2018, etc.).
Delia Carapoulos is a beautiful young woman, a recent graduate of Eckerd College, a starry-eyed fan of Tomlinson's, and also, according to her, his biological daughter, a revelation that shocks him out of his desultory amatory fantasies about the nubile visitor. In fact, she’s only the advance guard of a tidal wave of offspring made possible by Tomlinson’s endless sperm donations a generation ago. Now the anything-but-proud papa’s data has been released to several of the children looking to track him down, not all of them happy about the news of their paternity. One reputed son, Jayden F. Griffin, makes such an impression on his arrival at Sanibel that he’s hauled off by the feds and charged with terrorism and murder. By the time Tomlinson finally appeals to Doc Ford for help, his buddy is awash in an equally unwelcome reprise of his own past: the appearance of several variously threatening characters convinced that he can lead them to late, legendary treasure hunter Jimmy Jones’ lost millions. All right, Leo Alomar, the first of these latest intruders into Doc’s life, isn’t really a special investigator with the IRS’s Whistleblower Program. But Rayvon Darwin, the lover of Alomar’s estranged wife, Nanette, really is a lieutenant with the Nassau customs agency, and Doc’s only hope of thwarting his search for Lydia Johnson, the treasure hunter’s widow Doc helped to disappear, may be to assume the role of Morris Berg, the informant Ray wants to engage to get information that will sink Doc—unless of course he discovers that Morris and Doc are one and the same.
The plot, like so many of Doc’s recent adventures, tends to wind down rather than up, but a good time is had by all.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-735-21272-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Catchy title; too bad the psychothriller behind it—despite the publisher's big push—is a mostly routine tale of cop vs. serial-killer. And it's really too bad for Patterson (The Midnight Club, 1988, etc.) that William Diehl's new thriller, Primal Fear (reviewed above), covers some of the same territory with superior energy and skill. A few charms lift this above run-of-the-mill: Patterson's hero, D.C. psychologist/cop Alex Cross, is black, while his lover, Secret Service honcho Jezzie Flanagan, is white; and the narrative moves briskly by cutting between Cross's ambling account and a sharper third-person tracking, mostly of the killer's movements. He is Gary Soneji—a nobody living a deceptively quiet life as Gary "Murphy"—who has killed 200 people and now wants to commit the Crime of the Century and become Somebody: Soneji/Murphy snatches the daughter of a top actress and the son of the US secretary of the treasury. Enter Cross and Flanagan, whose bad luck at finding kids and kidnapper—who, taunting the cops, kills an FBI agent and gets away with a $10-million payoff, while one of the kids turns up dead—changes only when Soneji/Murphy, cracking up, holds hostage to a McDonald's and is wounded by a cop. Here, Patterson's tale begins to mirror Diehl's: Soneji/Murphy turns out to suffer from the same sensational psychosis as Diehl's villain; and in the ensuing trial, Soneji/Murphy's lawyer pursues a defense similar to that of Diehl's attorney-hero. But where Diehl's villain roars on the page, Soneji/Murphy barely smirks; and while Diehl's courtroom crackles with intelligence, Patterson's is almost transcript-dull. Patterson does wind up, however, with a fine noir twist. Cross is a likable hero, but with a watery plot and weak villain—Hannibal Lecter would eat Soneji for breakfast—he doesn't have much to work with here.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-316-69364-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1992
BOOK TO SCREEN
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