Cussler and Company continue the winning formula, and this jungle episode, featuring exotic locales and an interesting back...
"There was no such thing as an honest fortune," Sam and Remi Fargo are reminded as they undertake another treasure-hunting adventure in Cussler’s (The Eye of Heaven, 2014, etc.) latest.
The Fargos, multimillionaires-turned–treasure hunters blessed with Tracy-and-Hepburn dialogue, have flown to Guadalcanal at the behest of Leonid Vasyev, a Russian who explores lost civilizations. He’s found something odd beneath a forgotten bay. The Fargos were only supposed to be funding Vasyev, but soon they’re caught up in the mysteries he’s uncovered. To their surprise, they find themselves coping with local superstitions and civil unrest. And crocodiles. When one of Vasyev’s native workers gets bitten, the Fargos meet a local medico, Dr. Vanya, who later introduces them to Orwen Manchester, a member of Parliament. With the help of Manchester's contacts and of Selma, a genius researcher on the satellite phone, the Fargos learn Vasyev has found the Guadalcanal palace of King Loc, 12-century ruler of the entire Solomon Island group. The Fargos tap their pocketbook to finance Vasyev a new research ship, but meanwhile they gadabout Guadalcanal, being run off the road, shot at, getting caught in riots, and discovering caves holding countless skeletons, some too recent to be POWs killed by Imperial Japan’s notorious medical experimentation. They also uncover evidence the Japanese looted gold from King Loc’s submerged palace, but the real villain may be linked to pharmaceutical companies’ refusing to be "hamstrung by arcane rules and regulations." Scenes, settings, and action are graphic-novel worthy, from sweat-stained jungle treks to bad-guy confrontations, all laced with historical factoids and a soupçon of fantasy for across-the-board appeal.
Cussler and Company continue the winning formula, and this jungle episode, featuring exotic locales and an interesting back story, will satisfy the cravings of every fan.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-399-17432-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
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
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
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