Twelve expertly chosen tales of secret operatives: shadowy and elusive, cunningly written and thrillingly fraught with peril.
A master of the form culls from the cream of the cloak-and-dagger crop.
Having possibly already supplanted le Carré as the most popular writer of the spy genre, Furst (Blood of Victory, 2002, etc.) is as good a choice as any to headline this anthology. In an introduction, Furst lets us know he’s not after any old Bond knock-offs here, but wants good writing (“we are here in the literary end of the spectrum”) and “the pursuit of authenticity.” To that end, he made some excellent choices (fortunately taking sections out of novels as opposed to using only shorter pieces) that more than fulfill the rules he set for himself, where the characters “work at the sharp edge of the Manichean universe.” Things start off promisingly, with Eric Ambler’s 1939 “A Coffin for Dimitrious,” about a mystery novelist who pursues the ghost of arch-criminal/political operative Dimitrious across Turkey and the Balkans. Ambler’s voice is martini-dry and brilliantly focused on the details, but the real genius is the fleeting face of Dimitrious himself, who could well have been the inspiration for Keyser Soze in The Usual Suspects. Le Carré, of course, shows up here, but unfortunately, it’s a good-enough but unspectacular bit from “The Russia House” (George Smiley is the great, notable absence in this volume). A gem mostly forgotten is W. Somerset Maugham’s semiautobiographical “Ashenden,” whose titular British WWII spy is fey and given to extravagance: Oscar Wilde on a mission and saddled with a conscience. A memorable episode from Graham Greene’s The Quiet American is another surprising but excellent choice (a lesser editor would have assumed that Our Man in Havana was the one to go with), while Steinbeck’s The Moon Is Down, Anthony Burgess’ Tremor of Intent, and Orczy’s The Scarlet Pimpernel round things out quite nicely.
Twelve expertly chosen tales of secret operatives: shadowy and elusive, cunningly written and thrillingly fraught with peril.Pub Date: May 20, 2003
ISBN: 0-679-64251-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Modern Library
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2003
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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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