Atir appreciates subtle spycraft and knows his business, but this tale is often morose and features a woman who can be less...
An ex-Mossad agent sets off a scramble at the agency when she disappears.
Rachel’s father has died and she’s traveled to London to settle his estate, but her thoughts are filled with melancholy for the relationship the two failed to cement before she left home. When she finds a box of letters from her former handler, Ehud, in which he explains to her father that Rachel is working for Mossad—a detail she was forbidden to share with him herself—she decides she's had enough and vanishes—but only after calling Ehud and leaving him with a cryptic message: "My father died....He died for the second time." Her disappearance sets off alarms in Israeli intelligence circles: although Rachel has been retired for some time, what she knows about Mossad’s operations and key intelligence she developed could be ruinous. They need to find her and find her fast. Ehud and Joe, another retired agent, begin the search for the woman who is wanted “dead or alive,” and, as they continue, Ehud, long in love with Rachel, tells Joe her story. The point of view switches back and forth between Rachel as she pursues her missions and Ehud, who narrates Rachel’s story until this point. While the details of a covert operative’s life and methods are certainly fascinating, Atir’s style is not. Ehud and Rachel share the same voice, rendering the narrative strangely monotonous. It’s not a bad voice, but it never varies, even when the stakes change from forbidden love to a risky maneuver involving biological weapons. Ultimately, Rachel’s life comes across as sad, and she’s painted as capable but damaged. Readers will have to work hard to care about her since there’s little to justify Ehud’s undying love.
Atir appreciates subtle spycraft and knows his business, but this tale is often morose and features a woman who can be less likable than the people she seeks to best in her subterfuge.Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-14-312918-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that...
Twenty-four years after a traumatic disappearance tore a Georgia family apart, Slaughter’s scorching stand-alone picks them up and shreds them all over again.
The Carrolls have never been the same since 19-year-old Julia vanished. After years of fruitlessly pestering the police, her veterinarian father, Sam, killed himself; her librarian mother, Helen, still keeps the girl's bedroom untouched, just in case. Julia’s sisters have been equally scarred. Lydia Delgado has sold herself for drugs countless times, though she’s been clean for years now; Claire Scott has just been paroled after knee-capping her tennis partner for a thoughtless remark. The evening that Claire’s ankle bracelet comes off, her architect husband, Paul, is callously murdered before her eyes and, without a moment's letup, she stumbles on a mountainous cache of snuff porn. Paul’s business partner, Adam Quinn, demands information from Claire and threatens her with dire consequences if she doesn’t deliver. The Dunwoody police prove as ineffectual as ever. FBI agent Fred Nolan is more suavely menacing than helpful. So Lydia and Claire, who’ve grown so far apart that they’re virtual strangers, are unwillingly thrown back on each other for help. Once she’s plunged you into this maelstrom, Slaughter shreds your own nerves along with those of the sisters, not simply by a parade of gruesome revelations—though she supplies them in abundance—but by peeling back layer after layer from beloved family members Claire and Lydia thought they knew. The results are harrowing.
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that she makes most of her high-wire competition look pallid, formulaic, or just plain fake.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-242905-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally...
Yale’s secret societies hide a supernatural secret in this fantasy/murder mystery/school story.
Most Yale students get admitted through some combination of impressive academics, athletics, extracurriculars, family connections, and donations, or perhaps bribing the right coach. Not Galaxy “Alex” Stern. The protagonist of Bardugo’s (King of Scars, 2019, etc.) first novel for adults, a high school dropout and low-level drug dealer, Alex got in because she can see dead people. A Yale dean who's a member of Lethe, one of the college’s famously mysterious secret societies, offers Alex a free ride if she will use her spook-spotting abilities to help Lethe with its mission: overseeing the other secret societies’ occult rituals. In Bardugo’s universe, the “Ancient Eight” secret societies (Lethe is the eponymous Ninth House) are not just old boys’ breeding grounds for the CIA, CEOs, Supreme Court justices, and so on, as they are in ours; they’re wielders of actual magic. Skull and Bones performs prognostications by borrowing patients from the local hospital, cutting them open, and examining their entrails. St. Elmo’s specializes in weather magic, useful for commodities traders; Aurelian, in unbreakable contracts; Manuscript goes in for glamours, or “illusions and lies,” helpful to politicians and movie stars alike. And all these rituals attract ghosts. It’s Alex’s job to keep the supernatural forces from embarrassing the magical elite by releasing chaos into the community (all while trying desperately to keep her grades up). “Dealing with ghosts was like riding the subway: Do not make eye contact. Do not smile. Do not engage. Otherwise, you never know what might follow you home.” A townie’s murder sets in motion a taut plot full of drug deals, drunken assaults, corruption, and cover-ups. Loyalties stretch and snap. Under it all runs the deep, dark river of ambition and anxiety that at once powers and undermines the Yale experience. Alex may have more reason than most to feel like an imposter, but anyone who’s spent time around the golden children of the Ivy League will likely recognize her self-doubt.
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally dazzling sequels.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-31307-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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