Code lovers rejoice! This one’s for you.
Through a series of audio recordings, a former felon recounts his attempts to solve a literary code that may lead to stolen gold…or maybe that's all a red herring.
The novel begins with a letter written in 2021 from a police inspector to a professor, asking him to listen to a set of audio files that were found on an iPhone belonging to a man who's gone missing. What follows is a novel made up almost entirely of recordings and letters: recordings created by Steven Smith, who has recently been released from prison, wishes to connect with a son he never knew he had, and is haunted by a strange experience from his childhood that he only semi-remembers; and letters shared between Inspector Waliso and professor Mansfield in response to them. When Steven was a child, his teacher read the class a book by an author named Edith Twyford and then took them on a field trip that seems to have ended in tragedy. Trying to figure out what happened that day, he reaches out to the other children who were there and discovers that each of them has become fascinated with the “Twyford Code” that the author seems to have threaded through her novels. Twyford may have been a secret British agent during World War II involved in Operation Fish, a secret mission to move all of Britain’s gold stores to Canada for safekeeping. As he is drawn deeper into the intrigue of the code, Steven also records the story of his life—the deaths of his parents, his rough upbringing, and how he fell in with a family of criminals and eventually went to prison for theft. In a book with this many twists and turns, of course, there’s no way of knowing what's true and what's not, and Hallett continues to pull the rug out from under the reader every time we think we understand what's going on. The good: It’s complicated, in the best way, and the reveals over the last section of the book are truly gaspworthy. The bad: The recording gimmick does begin to feel a bit gimmicky, and this structure makes up 90% of the novel.
Code lovers rejoice! This one’s for you.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-668-00322-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
One of those rare triple-deckers that’s actually worth every page, every complication, every bead of sweat.
A routine break-in at the home of Sûreté homicide chief Armand Gamache leads slowly but surely to the revelation of a potentially calamitous threat to all Québec.
At first it seems as if nothing at all triggered the burglar alarm at Gamache’s home in Three Pines; it was literally a false alarm. It’s not till he receives a package containing his summer jacket that Gamache realizes someone really did get into his house, choosing to steal exactly this one item and return it with a cryptic note referring to “some malady…water” and “Angelica stems.” Having already refused to meet with Jeanne Caron, chief of staff to Marcus Lauzon, a powerful politician who’s already taken vengeance on Gamache and his family for not expunging his child’s criminal record, Gamache now agrees to meet with Charles Langlois, a marine biologist with ties to Caron who confesses to a leading role in stealing Gamache’s jacket. Their meeting ends inconclusively for Gamache, who’s convinced that Langlois is hiding something weighty, and all too conclusively for Langlois, who’s killed by a hit-and-run driver as he leaves. The news that Langlois had been investigating a water supply near the abbey of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups sends Gamache scurrying off to the abbey, where the plot steadily thickens until he’s led to ask how “an old recipe for Chartreuse” can possibly be connected to “a terrorist plot to poison Québec’s drinking water.” That’s a great question, and answering it will take the second half of this story, which spins ever more intricate connections among leading players that become deeply unsettling.
One of those rare triple-deckers that’s actually worth every page, every complication, every bead of sweat.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2024
ISBN: 9781250328137
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
This propulsive thriller twists into the dark and bloody underbelly of the world of fine art.
The discovery that a revered artist’s sculpture contains a human bone sets off scandal and violence.
Art historian James Becker has what seems like a sweet deal. He’s the curator of the collection of the Fairburn Foundation, housed at a stately home owned by the Lennox family: Sebastian, Becker’s best friend, and his bitter mother, Lady Emmeline. Becker’s wife, Helena, was Sebastian’s fiancee first, but they’re all very civilized about it and happily awaiting the birth of her baby. The centerpiece of the Fairburn collection is works by the late Vanessa Chapman, an artist about whom Becker wrote his thesis, and with whom he is somewhat obsessed. Partly, it’s because of her great talent, but she was also a glamorous figure, a beauty who, as she became successful, sequestered herself on an isolated Scottish tidal island called Eris. She had a dark side—lots of stormy relationships, plus a philandering mooch of a husband who vanished without a trace a few decades ago. Her reputation, though, has risen after her death—so much so that the Fairburn has loaned some of her works to the Tate Modern. That’s where a forensic anthropologist sees one of her sculptures, made of found objects that include what’s described as an animal bone. The scientist is sure the bone is human, and soon Becker finds himself scrambling to prevent scandal. Vanessa willed her works and papers to the foundation, but some of them are still on Eris, guarded by her longtime friend Grace Haswell. A retired doctor, Grace lived with Vanessa off and on over the years and nursed her through her fatal cancer. It was a surprise when Vanessa left her estate not to Grace but to Douglas Lennox, Emmeline’s husband and Sebastian’s father. Douglas was Vanessa’s gallerist and lover, but the two had a nasty falling-out. Sebastian is so frustrated by Grace’s refusal to turn over all of the bequest that he’s ready to sue her, but Becker believes he can negotiate, so off to the the island he goes. He finds far more treachery and shocking secrets than he expected, past and present alike. Hawkins keeps her cast tight, her wild setting ominous, and her plot moving fast.
This propulsive thriller twists into the dark and bloody underbelly of the world of fine art.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2024
ISBN: 9780063396524
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Mariner Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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