An intense political thriller that should attract House of Cards fans waiting for the next season.
In this tale of politics and betrayal, a Secret Service agent must do everything within his power to protect the president of the United States from forces that are conspiring to destroy him.
President Thomas Walters finds himself backed into a corner by an aggressive and ambitious U.S. senator from New Jersey, Tyler Rumson, who is armed with blackmail that would ruin the head of state’s life. So Walters decides to end it all, abruptly throwing Vice President David Kendall into the highest job in the land with the added responsibility of guiding a nation that is mourning a fallen leader. As his vice president, President Kendall chooses Rumson, unaware of the senator’s major role in his predecessor’s demise. Kendall also doesn’t know that Rumson is willing to do whatever it takes to push this final obstacle to the presidency out of his way. Meanwhile, Secret Service agent Matthew Richter is tortured by what he witnessed the day Walters died and can’t stop wondering if there was anything he could have done to save him. When Rumson and a few carefully chosen allies orchestrate a disaster designed to take President Kendall down, Richter finds himself with a second chance to save the commander in chief—but it will take all of his intelligence, bravery, and fortitude to survive the dangerous road ahead. Beyer packs his debut novel with just enough information about Washington, D.C., and its various institutions’ dueling agendas to make his wild tale feel grounded in reality without being weighed down by minutiae. Richter and Kendall are both noble, likable heroes, while Rumson is a deliciously evil villain in the mold of Frank Underwood of House of Cards. There is also a diverse cast of supporting characters, including two 20-something backpackers who find themselves tangled up in the fate of the president, that should keep the reader engaged in the human side of the story even as the plot gets dangerously close to flying off the rails. Richter is set to return in a second installment.
An intense political thriller that should attract House of Cards fans waiting for the next season.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9963857-0-1
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Old Stone Mill Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 9, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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