The latest adventure in a series that only grows more engaging with each installment.
In the sixth book in Kane’s (Baksheesh Bribes, 2015, etc.) Spies Lie series, a motley crew of spies, hackers, and mercenaries unites to stop China and Russia from declaring war on the United States.
Former Mossad spymaster Yigdal Ben-Levy is dying of cancer, but he refuses to live out his remaining days in hospice. Rather, he’s dead set on getting from Washington, D.C., to the United Nations General Assembly in New York City so that he can warn its members of a plot cooked up by Russia and China to attack America. What’s bad for the United States is bad for Israel, and Ben-Levy refuses to die with his beloved country in limbo after devoting his entire life to keeping it safe. In order to make it to the U.N. without getting killed by Russian and Chinese assassination squads, he calls on Jon Sommers, a former Mossad recruit who’s now working as a banker in New York. Sommers is furious with Ben-Levy, who’s responsible for the death of his fiancee, but when the dying man calls on him in his hour of need, he reluctantly agrees to help. He teams up with Israeli soldier–turned-mercenary Avram Shimmel, expert hacker William Wing, and former covert operative Cassandra Sashakovich, a Russian, to get the job done. The strengths of this thriller are its lack of especially graphic violence and relatively straightforward plotline, both of which make it more accessible than previous installments. Other Spies Lie stories occasionally got so complicated that it was difficult to keep track of whom to root for. The story here essentially boils down to a long chase scene, packed with action movie set pieces that wouldn’t be out of place in a Michael Bay film. Kane neatly ties up all the loose ends left over from the roller-coaster story arc that began in Bloodridge (2014) while also setting up Jon, Cassie, Avram, William, and company for further adventures together, which will please fans and give newcomers an opportunity to enter this addictive fictional world.
The latest adventure in a series that only grows more engaging with each installment.Pub Date: Nov. 27, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9862321-6-9
Page Count: 338
Publisher: The Swiftshadow Group, Inc.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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