Two years after his checkered hero’s last outing, Rankin makes you feel the wait was worth every day, whatever comes next.
Criminal Investigation Department pensioner John Rebus is lured from forced retirement by the world’s most unlikely client.
Wheelchair-bound Morris Gerald Cafferty, known by every criminal in Edinburgh as Big Ger, feels uncharacteristically guilty over the pressure he put on Jack Oram, who managed the Potter’s Bar for Cafferty and helped himself liberally to the till before vanishing four years ago. Now that he’s heard rumors Oram’s back in town, he’d like his old nemesis to track the embezzler down so that Cafferty could have a word with him. Initially incredulous, Rebus agrees to poke around. Meanwhile, Rebus’ old mate DI Siobhan Clarke is looking for another missing person—Cheryl Haggard, who has enough scars to present convincing evidence against her husband, Francis, a uniformed cop accused of domestic violence. Clarke’s old frenemy DI Malcolm Fox, a hotshot who’s vaulted into the Specialist Crime Division, wants her investigation shut down before Francis Haggard can retaliate by implicating half his fellow officers on the Tynecastle force. When Francis takes the dilemma out of Clarke’s hands by going AWOL and turning up conveniently stabbed to death, everything’s resolved—except for all those accusations about the Tynecastle constabulary, and the fate of the dead-or-alive Jack Oram, and what looks increasingly like a revolving door between Edinburgh’s criminal establishment and Edinburgh’s finest. Rebus and Clarke soon establish connections between his case and hers, but that unsurprising news is only the beginning of a series of detonations, figurative and literal, that will ultimately land Rebus, as a teasing prologue shows, standing in the dock himself.
Two years after his checkered hero’s last outing, Rankin makes you feel the wait was worth every day, whatever comes next.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-316-47363-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.
Four residents of Coopers Chase, a British retirement village, compete with the police to solve a murder in this debut novel.
The Thursday Murder Club started out with a group of septuagenarians working on old murder cases culled from the files of club founder Elizabeth Best’s friend Penny Gray, a former police officer who's now comatose in the village's nursing home. Elizabeth used to have an unspecified job, possibly as a spy, that has left her with a large network of helpful sources. Joyce Meadowcroft is a former nurse who chronicles their deeds. Psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif and well-known political firebrand Ron Ritchie complete the group. They charm Police Constable Donna De Freitas, who, visiting to give a talk on safety at Coopers Chase, finds the residents sharp as tacks. Built with drug money on the grounds of a convent, Coopers Chase is a high-end development conceived by loathsome Ian Ventham and maintained by dangerous crook Tony Curran, who’s about to be fired and replaced with wary but willing Bogdan Jankowski. Ventham has big plans for the future—as soon as he’s removed the nuns' bodies from the cemetery. When Curran is murdered, DCI Chris Hudson gets the case, but Elizabeth uses her influence to get the ambitious De Freitas included, giving the Thursday Club a police source. What follows is a fascinating primer in detection as British TV personality Osman allows the members to use their diverse skills to solve a series of interconnected crimes.
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-98-488096-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
A fun read. Terrorists make great Clancy fodder.
Evildoers plan attacks from America to India, and Jack Ryan Jr. is a prime target.
In Washington state, a man and his family are murdered, and President Jack Ryan learns it is another Poseidon Spear incident. Three retired members of that counterterrorism group have been killed now, and the U.S. government suspects a mole in its midst. Meanwhile, the Umayyad Revolutionary Council believes it has a holy and wholly anti-American mission. Against this backdrop, Jack Ryan Jr., and his fiancée, Lisanne Robertson, visit Delhi, India, to attend the wedding of Srini Rai, the brilliant surgeon who attached Lisanne’s prosthetic left arm. Lisanne had lost her arm in Tom Clancy Shadow of the Dragon (2020). Jack and Lisanne are both operators working for the Campus, a covert group that executes secret presidential directives. A wedding is a happy occasion, and the engaged American couple intend the trip as a vacation. Jack and Lisanne will attend a sangeet, an elaborate pre-wedding party. But it isn’t long before they survive a suicide bomb attack. As with all Clancy novels, there’s plenty of action on a global scale. In simultaneous strikes, terrorists plan to contaminate America’s Western water supply with radioactive waste from Washington’s Hanford nuclear power plant, blow up a spectacular new bridge in Kashmir, and kill the evil Ryan—or Junior, at least. It will be At-Takwir, the end of days. There is an appealing mix of Indian culture, high-speed action, and the rich lode of details that characterizes the whole series. And in the background lingers the question on several characters’ minds: Have Jack and Lisanne set their own wedding date?
A fun read. Terrorists make great Clancy fodder.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9780593718032
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
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