Literate, top-notch action laced with geopolitical commentary.
Silva (The Fallen Angel, 2012, etc.) drops Israeli superspy Gabriel Allon into a fractious encounter with the KGB’s ugly remnants.
Ambivalent and angst-filled agent Allon prefers painting, along with his passion for restoring the artwork of the masters. His wife, Chiara, a former agent, has been busy with the exhibit of the 22 pillars of Solomon’s Temple, a treasure discovered during another Allon adventure. But duty calls. The irascible Ari Shamron, former head of the "Office," Israel’s secret spy agency, wants Allon to aid the Brits. The British prime minister’s lover, Madeline Hart, has been kidnapped while vacationing in Corsica. Allon, working with Graham Seymour, MI5 deputy director, soon drops into a rabbit hole of double-dealing and sleeper agents, greed and revenge. The action moves from Corsica to France, England, Moscow and St. Petersburg. Allon reconciles with an assassin who once targeted him, Christopher Keller, a former British SAS agent, gone underground after a nasty friendly fire accident. Keller kills for Don Orsati, a Corsican olive oil king dabbling in murder for hire. With Orsati’s help, Allon and Keller trace Hart to Marseilles’ gritty underworld. Later, at Pas-De-Calais during a ransom transfer, the car delivering Hart explodes. The prime minister believes it’s over, but Allon wants vengeance, having promised Hart her rescue at an early proof-of-life meeting. Allon soon learns that Volgatek Oil & Gas, staffed by former KGB agents, kidnapped Hart in a scheme to tap British North Sea oil reserves. The Office’s old gang joins the fray, as well as exiled Viktor Orlov, extorted of the assets subsumed into Volgatek as the price of his freedom. Silva’s plot and action don’t strain believability, and his accomplished character sketches of players new and old are captivating. Nevertheless, Silva seems intent on reassuring readers he knows whereof he speaks by lacing the narrative with historical factoids and geographical minutia each time Allon sets foot in a new locale.
Literate, top-notch action laced with geopolitical commentary.Pub Date: July 16, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-207316-7
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
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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