Sprightly characters propel this tense story of dark secrets and duplicity.
The hunt for stolen Nazi treasure quickly turns deadly in Beck’s debut historical thriller.
Frank Reid is sad to lose his best friend and billionaire business partner Henry Weddell. Suspecting foul play, Frank enlists a security team in California to protect his own family as well as Henry’s, who may be targeted by diabolical types pursuing a fortune in Nazi-pilfered gold and cash. It seems that back in 1944, two American soldiers were captured by an SS officer, who made a deal with them: They’d get to live (“You’ve managed to avoid a firing squad”), and would even be comfortably rich, if they helped with a valuable haul. In 2008 Alaska, former CIA operative Jim Bennett keeps a close eye on three dubious individuals in his village: a wealthy oil producer, a recently-hired cop with a questionable past, and a nosy self-proclaimed writer. These potentially-linked men, along with Nazi artifacts that a local man unearthed decades ago, may all have ties to the search for the World War II–era loot. As the story progresses, Beck effortlessly adds characters to the perpetually growing cast; they include pilot Dale Olsen, Jim’s personable, 20-something kids Danny and Audra, and several highly-skilled members of security team Dark Star. There’s ample mystery at the beginning, as it’s unclear how the dual time eras, the action in two U.S. states, and the bevy of individuals will possibly connect. However, readers will be mostly caught up before the halfway point and way ahead of the characters piecing together what they’ve learned and concocting theories. There are still plentiful surprises and suspense as people double-cross one another or suddenly die (and trusting an SS general isn’t easy, even when he claims to despise Hitler). Facing off against greedy villains precipitates some entertaining action, and more than one pair among the cast may find a romance more rewarding than whatever the Nazis stole.
Sprightly characters propel this tense story of dark secrets and duplicity.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781886591363
Page Count: 418
Publisher: Blue Creek Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 6, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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