A detail-rich first novel, with some pacing issues, from an author with potential.
Debut novelist Ryan delivers a gritty mystery set in Stalinist 1936 Moscow.
In this Soviet-styled twist on the police procedural, Captain Alexei Korolev of the Criminal Investigation Division in Moscow examines the gruesome torture and murder of a woman whose mutilated corpse was left on the altar of a former church. It turns out that the victim was a Soviet woman who had emigrated to the United States as a child—and she was also a nun. Soon after, a thief is found tortured and killed in a similar manner, and Korolev is drawn into a mystery involving Moscow thieves, government officials and a secret and extremely valuable religious icon. Although this novel is set in an earlier era, its Soviet setting and tone of paranoia may remind some readers of Martin Cruz Smith’s 1981 mystery thriller Gorky Park. Ryan does a fine job conveying the grim, oppressive atmosphere of everyday life in a totalitarian state. His attention to period detail is notable, particularly the culturally specific touches, as when Korolev admiringly reads a passage from the novel A Hero of Our Time by Russian author Mikhail Lermontov, or when one character is described as having a “smile as firm and uncompromising as a Pravda editorial.” Even General Secretary Stalin makes a brief, nonspeaking cameo. Ryan’s characterization of Korolev—a loyal apparatchik who hides a stubborn streak of individualism, as well as a Bible under his floorboards—is particularly well-handled, and other minor characters, such as the overworked government doctor Zinaida Chestnova, are also effectively sketched. But for all the effort and research that clearly went into the novel’s setting and characters, the pacing is at times a bit slow, and the mystery holds few surprises. Still, the Soviet society Ryan portrays will likely hold the interest of many readers, and could make for an original and diverting series in the future.
A detail-rich first novel, with some pacing issues, from an author with potential.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-312-58645-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
A smoothly written contemporary caper paired with a murder mystery and a little meet-the-Jetsons futurism. No one does...
Written under her real name and her pseudonym, two books in one from megaselling Roberts/Robb.
Book one: Laine Tavish, gorgeous redhead and owner of a small-town antique store, isn’t about to tell the cops that she knew the old man who was hit by a car right outside her shop. Just before he took his dying breath, she recognized Willy Young, partner in crime to Big Jack O’Hara, her father. Their biggest heist: millions of dollars in hot diamonds. Her father went to prison, but not Willy, whose last words were “left it for you.” What did he leave—and where? Enter Max Gannon, insurance investigator and all-around stud, with thick, wavy, run-your-fingers-through-it hair, tawny eyes that remind Laine of a tiger, and a delicious Georgia drawl. He beds Laine pronto, and they solve the case. But some of the diamonds are still missing. . . . Book two: it’s 50 years later, and New York traffic is slower than ever: just try getting a helicab on a rainy day. But Samantha Gannon, author of a bestseller called Hot Rocks based on her grandparents’ experiences in the long-ago case, eventually makes it home from the airport to find her house-sitter Andrea dead, throat cut. Another investigation begins, spearheaded by Eve Dallas, a tough-talking but very appealing New York cop married to Roarke, a rich, eccentric genius who just barely manages to stay on the right side of the law. Is the murderer after the rest of the diamonds? And is he or she related to the master thief who betrayed Samantha’s great-grandfather? There are more burning questions, and Eve wants answers—but, first, get Central on the telelink and program the Autochef for pastrami on rye.
A smoothly written contemporary caper paired with a murder mystery and a little meet-the-Jetsons futurism. No one does Suspense Lite better than Nora.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-399-15106-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2003
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