A taut, exhilarating mystery with plenty of material for a sequel.
U.S. authorities try to solve the puzzle that a vengeance-seeking terrorist leaves behind in Washington, D.C., in this thriller.
FBI Special Agent and physician Kate Morgan is riding a commuter train to a congressional hearing. But she’s lucky to be alive after an explosive obliterates the tracks and derails the train. Readers know immediately that a man named Phillip Barnes is responsible for the attack, but his motives aren’t entirely clear. He definitely has a vendetta against Kate, whom he blames for killing his family. Inside a briefcase marked with Kate’s name, Barnes leaves a partial crossword puzzle and corresponding clues. Feds hope that deciphering the puzzle will lead them to the site of the next attack before it happens. Meanwhile, the Pentagon sends U.S. Army Capt. Rachel Pratt to assist the FBI’s investigation, though her secret directives include locating and eliminating the threat. But once she identifies the culprit as Barnes, with whom she has a personal history, Pratt ignores orders to return to her post and continues hunting the terrorist. As more pieces of the crossword arrive, feds bring in puzzle-solving guru (and civilian) Will Shortz for assistance. Kate begins to suspect that the strike in Washington relates to a covert program involving experiments on American soldiers. She’s likewise certain that Pratt, though helpful, is withholding information from her. Nevertheless, neither woman is safe, as Barnes’ plan, after he toys with the unwitting participants in his game, is sure to have a lethal ending. Grant (The Singularity Witness, 2018) fills this narrative with superlative female characters. Kate, for one, who appeared in the author’s preceding novel, is as smart as she is capable. She decrypts many of Barnes’ clues on her own and survives more than one explosion through sheer determination. There’s also equally intelligent Strategic Information & Operations Center unit chief Alice Watson, and resourceful, enigmatic Pratt. A surprising standout character among the men is Shortz, a fictionalized version of the real-life puzzle master. Though he’s unaccustomed to someone pointing a gun at him, he keeps his cool when it inevitably occurs. Grant retains a steady pace and suspense as even the reverberations of bombings elicit lasting images: “A heavy sky had turned orange, almost bloodlike in spots. Fire licked at building openings, places where doors and windows had been.” What exactly is unfolding, especially specifics on the revenge Barnes seeks, is a mystery for much of the story. But it’s the characters that truly generate the narrative tension. For example, Kate is understandably wary of Pratt, who’s sometimes deceitful and typically evasive. This ultimately leads to a gleefully convoluted face-off with Kate and several other characters that sizzles with revelations, double crossings, and seemingly shifting alliances. Some things are left unresolved by the end, like a mystery possibly involving neuroscientist Thomas Parker, who despite starring alongside Kate in the earlier book doesn’t show up here. But Grant thoroughly and convincingly wrap ups this story’s main plot.
A taut, exhilarating mystery with plenty of material for a sequel.Pub Date: May 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73250-405-9
Page Count: 512
Publisher: MindScape Press, Inc.
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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