An energetic international drama with an indefatigable heroine.
A Cold War novel that features two accidental spies on a daring mission to change the Soviet government.
Set in Northern Europe in 1971, Baker’s epic international spy thriller chronicles the lives of Lena Kristoff, a Soviet academic economist, and Eric Barrenger, an American paleontology student in Sweden. Each ends up embroiled in the Cold War espionage that’s a perfect fit for the setting. Lena dreams of changing her government’s totalitarian system, while younger, more impressionable grad student Eric imagines the life of a spy to be lucrative and thrilling, so he accepts jobs to discreetly courier packages to remote locations. The characters’ paths converge in Leningrad, and they begin a steamy love affair, although the danger increases as the courier jobs become more complex. When a delivery goes wrong, Eric is shot and Lena barely escapes with her life, and as the couple are separated, Lena fears the worst. Before long, she’s surprised by an unexpected pregnancy, and raises Eric’s child with her sister, Katya, and her friends. In 1978, she takes a new secret assignment, assessing a computer model of the Soviet economic structure and smuggling documents for the CIA, which could make her aspirations for a Soviet “turnover to a Western-style economy and democracy” come true. Lena’s mission soon puts her on the run with her young son in tow, and in the novel’s gripping second half, she attempts to outsmart angry Soviet military colonels in a chase across Eastern Europe. Over the course of this book, Baker expertly sets scenes of betrayal, sabotage, and surveillance, all energized by Lena’s steely determination to bring down the Soviet government. The scenes between her and Eric effectively leaven the espionage excitement with passionate romance, but after a showdown at the Austrian border nearly kills Lena, it leads to characters reconsidering their lives. Baker once again shows himself to be a skillful, seasoned writer, as he adroitly demonstrated in his past historical biographies, detective series, and espionage novels.Throughout, he delivers captivating action as the gently simmering plot rolls along, with exacting, atmospheric period details, and crisp character development.
An energetic international drama with an indefatigable heroine.Pub Date: May 10, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-94-933622-1
Page Count: 511
Publisher: Other Voices Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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