A fleet and dramatic, if far-fetched, tale of global conflict.
A political thriller that imagines a world brought to the brink of nuclear war by an Iranian plot to attack Israel and the United States.
Col. Arshad Sassani is a high-ranking Iranian intelligence officer who’s also a valuable informant for Israel. He’s been funneling the Mossad details about Iran’s nuclear capabilities and ambitions. After he reveals a plot to launch missiles against major cities in Israel (Tel Aviv) and the United States (Washington, D.C., and New York City), the Israeli government dispatches Maj. Yaacov “Jake” Rafaeli, a top Mossad agent, to extract Sassani. Israeli authorities believe the planned attack will be nearly impossible to prevent by conventional military means, so they hatch a plan to use a deadly biological weapon to pre-emptively wipe out Iran’s entire population. However, the plan would also affect the majority of the surrounding region—14 nations in total. Israeli scientists develop an antidote to protect their own people, and their government tries to blackmail the United States into assisting in the operation by threatening to release the virus on American soil. Then Shannon Parks, the deputy director of the CIA, brokers a deal with Mossad head Shlomo Mizrahi to take out Iran’s nuclear missiles instead. Meanwhile, Iran races to find and silence Sassani and arrest and torture his family members to assess the damage he’s done. Debut author Levy sets the story in 2028, a world that’s seen a brutal reprisal of the 9/11 attacks on America, ceaseless turmoil in the Middle East, and a bellicose Russia, still led by a ruthless Vladimir Putin. The prose is clear and crisp, and the action is relentless, fueled by a combination of brooding cynicism and the imminent prospect of catastrophe. Overall, this is a bombastic and cinematic thriller, so it’s unsurprising that it abandons any sense of political plausibility from the start. Also, the dialogue can be breathlessly melodramatic at times, as when an Israeli scientist describes the biological weapon: “Gentlemen, Plague Ten is truly the incarnate Angel of Death.”
A fleet and dramatic, if far-fetched, tale of global conflict.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73291-392-9
Page Count: 244
Publisher: Chickadee Prince Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 28, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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