Good for smiles and chuckles until war becomes more real.
The Blitz is on, and Britain must protect its precious symbol.
With his nation in peril in 1939, Winston Churchill concocts a scheme to protect the crown jewels: transport them to a submarine that will whisk them off to the safety of Canada. He recruits Hector, Lord Neville-Percy of Marlton, and police constable Caitrin Colline, a “Welsh firebrand, antiroyalist, and future destroyer of England’s aristocracy,” to act as a squabbling married couple driving a hay wagon. While this may not have been one of Winnie’s better ideas, he certainly finds two people with clashing backgrounds and personalities. (In reality, the jewels were buried on British soil.) The book is an oddity for a World War II novel. It’s funny and filled with witty dialogue, coming mostly from Caitrin. To each other, they are Hecky and Catty. When anyone asks what they’re carrying in the hay wagon, she answers the crown jewels, correctly expecting not to be believed. Some people they meet are not even convinced that they’re married. And they must deal with Die Brücke—The Bridge—whose members wish the English could just get along with Hitler. Violence is a long time coming in this novel, and for a while the humor carries more weight than the plot. But sometimes the interchanges cross into plain silliness: “‘…a horse box full of hay bales that no one is allowed to see. Tip-top secret, no?’ ‘Yes,’ Caitrin [replies.] ‘The hushest of all hushedy-hushes.’” The exchanges between Hector and Caitrin show off many of the class differences between them. Caitrin would just as soon expropriate all the aristocrats’ property and tell them to go get jobs like everybody else. Hector is defensive about his class, saying hey, don’t blame me for the circumstances I was born into. Eventually there is bloodletting—this is war—and Caitrin acquits herself as a woman you wouldn’t care to mess with. Meanwhile, they remain well aware of the scourge of the Nazi bombers pummeling England. So the big question is whether they will make it to the submarine or end up somewhere they’d never imagine.
Good for smiles and chuckles until war becomes more real.Pub Date: July 23, 2024
ISBN: 9781496749093
Page Count: 304
Publisher: John Scognamiglio Books/Kensington
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
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
A unique story of transcendent love.
An aimless young musician meets the girl of his dreams only to have his newfound happiness threatened by several inexplicable—and possibly supernatural—events.
The story opens as Leeds Gabriel meets with a detective while his girlfriend, Layla, is restrained in a room one flight above them. Through the interview, readers learn that Leeds was wasting both his time and his musical talent playing backup for a small-town wedding troupe called Garrett’s Band when he spied Layla dancing her heart out to their mediocre music at a wedding. When Leeds approaches Layla, their connection is both instant and intense. A blissful courtship follows, but then Leeds makes the mistake of posting a picture of himself with Layla on social media. A former girlfriend–turned-stalker wastes no time in finding and attacking Layla. Layla spends months recovering in a hospital, and it seems the girl Leeds fell for might be forever changed. Gone is her special spark, her quirkiness, and the connection that had entranced Leeds months before. In a last-ditch effort to save their relationship, he brings Layla back to the bed-and-breakfast where they first met. When they get there, though, Leeds meets Willow, another guest, and finds himself drawn to her in spite of himself. As events unfold, it becomes clear that Willow will either be the key to saving Leeds’ relationship with Layla or the catalyst that finally extinguishes the last shreds of their epic romance. Told entirely from Leeds’ point of view, the author’s first foray into paranormal romance does not disappoint. Peppered with elements of mystery, psychological thriller, and contemporary romance, the novel explores questions about how quickly true love can develop, as well as the conflicts that can imperil even the strongest connections. Despite a limited cast of characters and very few setting changes, the narrative manages to remain both fast-paced and engaging. The conclusion leaves a few too many loose ends, but the chemistry between the characters and unexpected twists throughout make for a satisfying read.
A unique story of transcendent love.Pub Date: Dec. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5420-0017-8
Page Count: 301
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020
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