Energetic action, a tricky plot, and political analysis are not always comfortable together.
To finance a better future, some comrades in arms steal a lot of money.
Under the aegis of Army Gen. Tommy Taylor, a group of soldiers steals more than $2 billion, intended for bribes in Syria, to help advance the career of Nebraska's junior senator, Ben Corn. Naturally, there are some not-very-ordinary people involved: CIA agent Greta Webb is beautiful, worldly, brilliant, sexually omnivorous, practiced in the art of deception, and lethal in several disciplines, while Don Carter, in charge of security, has raised paranoia to an art form. Also present at the heist, though not a member of the group, is Fyodor Volk, head of the Parsifal Group—a Blackwater-like paramilitary organization—and one of Vladimir Putin's favorite minions. Parsifal had contracted to provide backup security for the operation, and Volk quickly figures out what is being stolen and initiates a close relationship with Webb and the money. It turns out that having $2 billion is not the same as spending $2 billion, and a lot of exposition is provided on the various ways of moving large sums into mainstream economies. Finally, the group settles on using a hedge fund, and thus Industrial Strategies and Elias Vicker, Wall Street's most psychopathic billionaire, enter the plot. Vicker spins out of control, Volk crashes the party, it turns out that in the world of really big money everyone knows everyone else, and the convolutions of allegiance and plot are dark and tangled. The narrative is further burdened with analyses of American policy failures in several areas: military action, foreign relations, social initiative, and more. These ostensibly demonstrate what a fresh and clear vision Corn possesses (and most of the others share with him), but sometimes they feel a little extracurricular. Perhaps to compensate the reader for time spent in the desert, the action sequences are especially violent and bloody and the sex scenes, extravagant. Much of the digressive material could have been edited, at the cost of toning down the aggressive didacticism, but if you start with $2 billion, what is excess?
Energetic action, a tricky plot, and political analysis are not always comfortable together.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982156-02-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2021
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.
A successful Vermont podcaster who’s elicited confessions from dozens of criminals finds herself on the other side of the table, in the hottest of hot seats, over her own troubled past.
Poe Webb was only 13 when she saw her mother, Margaret McMillian, get stabbed to death by the man she’d picked up for a quickie. Poe had vowed revenge, but how could a kid find and avenge herself on a stranger who’d vanished as quickly as he appeared? In the long years since then, Poe’s made a name for herself as a top true-crime podcaster who routinely invites her guests to tell her audience exactly what they did. Now, she’s being pressed, and pressed hard, by Ian Hindley, whose fake name echoes those of England’s Moors Murderers, to join him in a livestream her fans will find riveting because, as Hindley tells her, he’s actually Leopold Hutchins, the pickup who stabbed her mother 14 times when she failed to use her safe word. Skeptical? Hindley knows endless details about the killing that were never released by the police. If Poe won’t do the broadcast, Hindley threatens to harm everyone she loves: her father; her producer and lover, Kip Nguyen; and her black Lab, Bailey. And there’s one more complication that makes the pressure on Poe even more unbearable. Seven years ago, against all odds, she succeeded in tracking Leopold Hutchins from Burlington to New York and killing him herself. In fact, it’s that murder that Hindley most wants her to talk about. Which bully is more fearsome, the man who’s threatening her or the man she killed?
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781464226229
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
An accomplished but emotionally undercooked courtroom drama by the author who made that genre popular.
Having been falsely convicted of murder himself years ago, prosecutor Rusty Sabich defies common wisdom in defending his romantic partner’s adopted son against the same accusation.
Now 76, Rusty has retired to the (fictitious) Skageon Region in the upper Midwest, far removed from Kindle County, Turow’s Chicago stand-in, where he was a star attorney and judge. Aaron Housley, a Black man raised in a bleached rural environment, has had his troubles, including serving four months for holding drugs purchased by Mae Potter, his erratic, on-and-off girlfriend. Now, after suddenly disappearing to parts unknown with her, he returns alone. When days go by without Mae’s reappearance, it is widely assumed that Aaron harmed her. Why else would he be in possession of her phone? Following the discovery of Mae’s strangled body and incriminating evidence that points to Aaron, Rusty steps in. Opposed in court by the uncontrollable, gloriously named prosecutor Hiram Jackdorp, he fears he’s in a lose-lose situation. If he fails to get Aaron off, which is highly possible, the boy’s mother, Bea, will never forgive him. If Rusty wins the case, the quietly detached Bea—who, like half the town, has secrets—will have trouble living with the unsparing methods Rusty uses to free Aaron. In attempting to match, or at least approach, the brilliance of his groundbreaking masterpiece Presumed Innocent (1987), Turow has his own odds to overcome. No minor achievement like a previous follow-up, Innocent (2010), the new novel is a powerful display of straightforward narrative, stuffed with compelling descriptions of people, places, and the legal process. No one stages courtroom scenes better than this celebrated Chicago attorney. But the book, whose overly long scenes add up to more than 500 pages, mostly lacks the gripping intensity and high moral drama to keep those pages turning. It’s an absorbing and entertaining read, but Turow’s fans have come to expect more than that.
An accomplished but emotionally undercooked courtroom drama by the author who made that genre popular.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781538706367
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2024
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
