A layered spy novel helmed by a remarkable female agent.
In Vincenti’s World War II thriller, a young Swedish spy makes her mark.
Vincenti, whose last work was The Sandman (2018), creates a smart, fearless lead in Glenda Paal, a “linguistic chameleon.” At 16, Glenda is spending the summer working for the Swedish Legation in Berlin, where she meets German spies, falls in love, and becomes pregnant. In 1939 Sweden, having a child out of wedlock is illegal, so Glenda’s father uses his undercover contacts to smuggle her to Canada after she gives birth to a son. At a British-run training camp, she receives combat and spy training. In Ottawa, Glenda fosters a relationship with Russian intelligence and subsequently becomes a triple agent to defeat Nazism. While working for the Canadians, she’s supposedly spying on her Russians contacts for the Germans. She develops multiple personas and successfully completes missions involving defections and smuggling people to safety all while juggling three demanding spy agencies. Glenda finds herself on an even more dangerous mission when she’s assigned to the Manhattan Project compound in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where her identity and intentions are thoroughly scrutinized. There she witnesses the first atomic bomb explosion, the “devil’s dawn” of the book title. Glenda just hopes the war will end soon so she can join her son and parents in Sweden and maybe reconnect with her German boyfriend. Glenda is a stellar, larger-than-life (in good spy-genre style) lead. She does have a few minor flaws to humanize her, such as confusing the makeup styles of two of her personas. Vincenti’s nail-biter has a dauntless hero at its center and capably renders the realities of World War II. J. Edgar Hoover, Joseph Stalin, and other historical figures make memorable appearances. The novel also does a fine job of exploring Sweden’s attempt to remain neutral in the war, the realities of living in a makeshift community in the desert, and the morality of making a terrible weapon to end a terrible war.
A layered spy novel helmed by a remarkable female agent.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
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
This mystery’s promising premise bogs down in an overloaded cast.
When one woman takes on another’s identity to uncover a crime, they both become suspects in a murder.
Aubrey Price and Camille Bayliss come from different worlds, only crossing paths because of the discovery that Camille’s husband, powerful lawyer Ben Bayliss, is hiding something terrible that affects them both. As the novel opens, Aubrey is driving Camille’s Range Rover, then teetering into a bar on Camille’s high heels, with Camille’s dress and credit cards and a wig that mimics Camille’s hair, pretending to be her because Ben tracks his wife’s every move and expenditure, and Camille wants to create a smokescreen while she sneaks into his office in search of evidence of that unnamed secret. But the scheme goes awry, and the women become each other’s alibis after Camille finds Ben murdered in their home. The first part of the book builds suspense and misdirection well, with Aubrey and Ben’s straight-arrow partner, Hank Landry, serving as first-person observers in some chapters while others track Camille. She’s a wealthy and privileged woman but not a happy one, stuck under the thumbs of her husband and her tyrannical father, Randall Everett, who pretty much runs their small Louisiana town. Aubrey was orphaned as a teen when her parents died in a car crash and has proudly fended for herself ever since, coming to depend on her four roommates, who have become friends. But as the cast of characters grows, it seems as if almost everyone in town has a motive for killing Ben, and the piling up of suspects and movements among different timelines can sometimes be confusing. And it all comes to a frustrating end when, after a whole school of red herrings, the solution to Ben’s murder arrives out of far left field.
This mystery’s promising premise bogs down in an overloaded cast.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9780593834459
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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