A parable of reclaiming personal and tribal identity by seizing power at all costs.
A debut whose larger-than-life heroine is a Miami-based assassin for the African Tribal Council.
This novel begins with a series of trigger warnings, so you can be sure you’re in for a wild ride with Nena Knight, nee Aninyeh Ama Asym, code-named Echo, as she alternately takes down her people’s enemies and explains the background that made her who she is. Shuttling back and forth between Aninyeh’s childhood in N’nkakuwe, a village in Ghana led by her father, Michael Asym, and a present in which Nena and her crack team methodically execute enemies of the Tribe, Angoe presents Michael’s betrayal by his old school friend Paul Frempong; the deaths of Michael and most of his family members; the gang rape of Aninyeh and the burning of the village; Aninyeh’s sale into slavery; her escape and adoption by Noble Knight, High Council of the Tribe; and her training as a skilled assassin. Nena’s violent but satisfying life is upended when she unexpectedly meets Cortland Baxter, a U.S. federal attorney targeted by the Tribe at the request of wealthy businessman Lucien Douglas, whom the Council is eager to add to their numbers, and decides that she can’t kill him, at least partly because she’s falling for him. The stakes in her disobedience rapidly mount as she realizes she’s not the only person to walk away from the massacre at N’nkakuwe and assume a new identity.
A parable of reclaiming personal and tribal identity by seizing power at all costs.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2995-7
Page Count: 431
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2021
PERSPECTIVES
A fun read. Terrorists make great Clancy fodder.
Evildoers plan attacks from America to India, and Jack Ryan Jr. is a prime target.
In Washington state, a man and his family are murdered, and President Jack Ryan learns it is another Poseidon Spear incident. Three retired members of that counterterrorism group have been killed now, and the U.S. government suspects a mole in its midst. Meanwhile, the Umayyad Revolutionary Council believes it has a holy and wholly anti-American mission. Against this backdrop, Jack Ryan Jr., and his fiancée, Lisanne Robertson, visit Delhi, India, to attend the wedding of Srini Rai, the brilliant surgeon who attached Lisanne’s prosthetic left arm. Lisanne had lost her arm in Tom Clancy Shadow of the Dragon (2020). Jack and Lisanne are both operators working for the Campus, a covert group that executes secret presidential directives. A wedding is a happy occasion, and the engaged American couple intend the trip as a vacation. Jack and Lisanne will attend a sangeet, an elaborate pre-wedding party. But it isn’t long before they survive a suicide bomb attack. As with all Clancy novels, there’s plenty of action on a global scale. In simultaneous strikes, terrorists plan to contaminate America’s Western water supply with radioactive waste from Washington’s Hanford nuclear power plant, blow up a spectacular new bridge in Kashmir, and kill the evil Ryan—or Junior, at least. It will be At-Takwir, the end of days. There is an appealing mix of Indian culture, high-speed action, and the rich lode of details that characterizes the whole series. And in the background lingers the question on several characters’ minds: Have Jack and Lisanne set their own wedding date?
A fun read. Terrorists make great Clancy fodder.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9780593718032
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
The best news of all: The climax leaves the door open to further reports from the hilariously misnamed British Intelligence.
A series of mounting complications leads to yet another fight to the death between the discarded intelligence agents of Slough House and the morally bankrupt head of MI5.
As Jackson Lamb’s motley crew on Aldersgate Street struggles to cope with the deaths of River Cartwright’s grandfather and mentor, intelligence veteran David Cartwright, and their dim, beloved colleague Min Harper, new troubles are brewing. Diana Taverner, who runs the British Intelligence Service from Regent’s Park, is being blackmailed by former MP Peter Judd to do his bidding. Nothing untoward about that, of course, but this time, Judd’s demands, backed by a compromising tape recording, are more pressing than usual. So Diana reconvenes the Brains Trust—Al Hawke, Avril Potts, Daisy Wessex, and their ex-boss Charles Cornell Stamoran—whose last assignment was to serve as the contact for psychopathic IRA informant Dougie Malone while turning a blind eye to his multiple rapes and murders, which were really none of the Crown’s business. Taverner’s new assignment for the Brains Trust is the assassination of Judd. Since all these developments are filtered through the riotously cynical lens of Herron’s imagination, nothing goes as planned, and when the smoke clears, the fatalities don’t include Judd. Now that Judd knows he has as much reason to fear Taverner as she does to fear him, Lamb offers to broker a peace meeting between them which Slough House computer geek Roddy Ho will keep secret by knocking out 37 security cameras around Taverner’s dwelling. What could possibly go wrong?
The best news of all: The climax leaves the door open to further reports from the hilariously misnamed British Intelligence.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9781641297264
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Soho Crime
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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