Intricately crafted and clocklike in its controlled release of psychological and geopolitical tension.
Embedded as a driver in the London home of Russian money launderer Josef Goldmann, undercover officer Jonathan Carrick’s assignment is yielding no useful information.
But when intel regarding the sale of a portable nuke makes Goldmann of interest to MI5, the stakes rise. Carrick foils an apparent assassination attempt and finds himself finagled into Goldmann’s trust just as they hook up with the broker, mafia heavy Reuven Weissberg whose lineage, nihilism and innate distrustfulness descend from a survivor of the Sobibor extermination camp. As a pawn in the hands of the brusque, unorthodox Christopher Lawson, 38 years an officer with the Secret Intelligence Service, Carrick walks the high wire sans safety net, enduring ruthless tests by mafia thugs. Meanwhile two disgruntled former Soviet soldiers excavate the weapon from its hiding place in a vegetable patch and set off in a decrepit car on a bizarre, often Quixotic odyssey, facing border crossings and inspections with the weapon hidden loosely under a tarp. The buyer, an Islamic militant operative known as “The Crow,” has lined up an expert to verify the device’s authenticity, a nuclear scientist let go from his position for family connection to the tribal areas in Pakistan. Themes of disenfranchisement breeding treachery and buried evils inevitably resurfacing permeate this latest, balletic thriller from Seymour (Walking Dead, 2008, etc.), whose sense of historical underpinnings, earned from years of covering terrorism as a journalist, elevate this tale to the heights of the genre, offering sprung steel suspense and sobering depictions of a world tilting on its nuclear fulcrum from Cold War deadlock to post 9-11 volatility. As the threat of nuclear terrorism looms, Carrick’s psychological state threatens collapse. Weissberg leads him to the site of one holocaust—will it become birthplace of another?
Intricately crafted and clocklike in its controlled release of psychological and geopolitical tension.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-59020-699-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: Dec. 27, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2012
A tranquil story about Jonathan and his two secrets: “One is buried in a patch of sunny earth. The other was buried in a patch of evening mist.” The secret in the sunny patch is a sunflower. The other secret appears to be a second flower—a night-blooming cereus or a queen of the night? When the big day comes, Jonathan and his whole family stand in awe, mouths agape at the “flashiest flower” sister Kate has ever seen. Come night, Jonathan creeps down stairs and is joined by his father outside. There the second secret unfolds: It is not a different flower at all, but the sunflower by night, radiant still. The mystery of night adds a note of excitement to Jonathan’s secret, but not enough to strain the lullaby sweetness of this story. Every page is enhanced by Lambert’s soft pastels. (Picture book. 3-7)
Pub Date: June 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-899607-98-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sterling
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1999
Gradually, globe-hopping flights and substitutions of a hilariously unconvincing forgery for the real van Gogh start to take...
Now that he’s completed his trilogy of prison diaries (2003–05), Lord Archer, out on the street again, returns to his old habits with this tale of a disgraced art expert’s attempt to thwart her villainous banker boss’s plot to fleece a fine old English family of van Gogh’s Self-portrait with Bandaged Ear.
The morning after Lady Victoria Wentworth has her throat cut before she can follow Dr. Anna Petrescu’s advice about selling off her van Gogh to cover her debt to Fenston Finance, Bryce Fenston fires Anna for offering the advice. Getting sacked is the best thing that could have happened to her, because while she’s waiting for an elevator to take her down to the first floor of the World Trade Center for the last time, the building is rocked by a fiery explosion. Yes, it’s 9/11, and while Archer is using the disaster as colorful background, Anna’s taking advantage of the chaos to disappear, presumed dead. She plans to fly to England and ask Arabella Wentworth, Victoria’s twin and heir, to help her steal the canvas, now technically Fenston’s property, before Fenston’s lieutenant, disbarred lawyer Karl Leapman, can pick it up. Knowing that a terrorist bombing goes only so far, Archer (Sons of Fortune, 2003, etc.) ladles on extra complications. An FBI agent who’s had his eye on Fenston gets on Anna’s trail. Her phone calls to her friend Tina Forster, Fenston’s assistant, puts her irate ex-boss close behind. The knife-wielding assassin who killed Victoria Wentworth goes after Anna as well.
Gradually, globe-hopping flights and substitutions of a hilariously unconvincing forgery for the real van Gogh start to take the place of plot developments, and somewhere between Bucharest and London, most of the suspense evaporates, though there are still a hundred pages left to run.Pub Date: March 7, 2006
ISBN: 0-312-35372-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2005
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