An espionage tale with plenty of entertainment value for series’ fans.
Dyer’s latest spy-thriller series entry follows his titular character through harrowing personal and political circumstances in World War II-era Europe.
In 1943, on New York’s Long Island, American intelligence operative Conor Thorn is testifying at the trial of his late wife Grace’s rapist, Buster Seaker, the son of a high-powered political official. Although his testimony goes well, he can’t keep his rage contained and winds up in a fight with the offender on his way out of the courtroom, which leaves the trial’s outcome in question. He goes abroad to London, where he faces a new problem: He doesn’t know where his current love, Emily, has been assigned for a covert mission. Desperate to reconnect and ensure her well-being, he finds himself trying anything to get assigned to the same case, or to a similar case near her. As luck would have it, the mission to uncover a double agent allows Conor to be covertly dropped into Paris, where Emily is working to find and bring back an important medievalist researcher named Beth Killane, whose sister’s daughter is ill and in desperate need of a major surgery in order to survive. All plotlines wind up intertwining, and much blood will be shed in the end. And, despite accomplishing the mission, not everyone’s lives can be spared. As the fifth in a series centering on a sometimes-impulsive and perhaps not-always-believable main character, Dyer appears to repeat a formula from past entries as he skillfully places historical figures in the narrative who provide a solid sense of veracity, even if their characterization can be thin. Still, the appealingly short chapters with location and date headings make for tight pacing and high tension as the multiple plotlines ramp up. Overall, the engaging locations, storylines, and characters are sure to satisfy fans of the genre.
An espionage tale with plenty of entertainment value for series’ fans.Pub Date: today
ISBN: 979-8988796138
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.
What hasn’t legendary legal eagle Grisham tried yet? How about a thriller about serial kidnapping and international terrorism.
When Paul and Chelsea Tanner disappear during a day trip on their Paris honeymoon, their abductors demand a ransom of $2 million from Chelsea’s wealthy parents, and a few days later the same sum from Paul’s much less well-heeled parents. After orthopedist Lowell Clayburn, Chelsea’s father, ponies up the ransom without breathing a word to the authorities, his daughter is promptly released. But even though Paul’s parents sell their home, liquidate their assets, and borrow money from the Clayburns to meet the kidnappers’ demands, the villains hold on to Paul anyway. Asked whether he’s ever seen such an outcome in a double kidnapping, FBI deputy director Andrew Strong tells Lowell: “No, this is a new one.” But it’s not, as Strong knows all too well; it’s the third such active case, all involving honeymooning couples whose bridegrooms had served in the armed forces. After masterfully drawing readers in with his bare-knuckle account of the Tanners’ abduction and the attempt by their families and the CIA to tell the lies required to keep caring friends and the rapacious press at bay, Grisham effortlessly switches gears to follow CIA agent Rae Claire Russo and Stuart Nash, a former Department of Justice prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay who agrees to marry her so they can serve as bait for the kidnappers, whose motives include justice and revenge as well as cold hard cash. So much for the imprisoned Paul’s wistful reflection that “hopefully, it was only about money.”
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9780385550543
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2026
A novel that’s lacking both as fiction and history.
The latest Patterson co-write dramatizes unproven rumors that Adolf Hitler shot and killed his 23-year-old half niece, Geli Raubal, in Munich in 1931 in a fit of jealousy.
As with other young women in his past, Hitler essentially kept Raubal captive and forced her to participate in perverse sexual rituals with him. The murder occurs after she tells him she’s leaving Munich for Vienna to be with a man she intends to marry. (Fictional) police detective Thomas Bauer, a war hero whose wife and children are Jewish, risks his life over and over to nail Hitler for the crime (which is ruled a suicide) as the fascist state evolves and concentration camp horrors unfold. Periodically, the action shifts to the present, when in brief superfluous scenes an American professor, Eleanor Robbins, is mysteriously targeted for her efforts to obtain films of Hitler’s final moments with Raubal. The portrayal of Hitler is so caricatured that he casts a thin shadow here—as do the evil trio of Goebbels, Himmler, and Göring—depriving the story of urgency. The authors are more comfortable offsetting sobering, dutifully rolled out facts about Hitler’s rise and fall with breezy entertainment. Bauer, a master of the wisecrack, teams up with a young former intelligence officer in buddy-movie fashion. In one of this overlong novel’s best scenes, Raubal—the subject of much better novels, including Ron Hansen’s Hitler’s Niece (1999)—goes to a nightclub with Hitler; once there, he nudges her into showing off her vocal skills, only to have her ruffle his insecurities by stealing attention. In the end, Robbins pronounces, “Everything that happened…could have been prevented, if honest people had been allowed to simply do their jobs.” Fat chance of that.
A novel that’s lacking both as fiction and history.Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2026
ISBN: 9780316404099
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
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