Every Reacher novel delivers a jolt to the nervous system, but this lacks some of the stylistic flair that truly...
Despite plenty of page-turning propulsion, this is one of the lesser novels in the series.
Now that Jack Reacher has become a film franchise, it seems that he—or maybe his author (Never Go Back, 2013, etc.)—is spreading himself a little thin. The 19th novel featuring the former MP–turned–Zen do-gooder—dubbed “Sherlock Homeless” by one of his old Army officers—once again starts with him drifting with nothing more than the clothes on his back—no cellphone or bank account, no plans, no destination, no history that’s apparent to anyone he encounters. Yet, through a stretch of plotting coincidence, he finds himself pulled into his military past and then thrust into an international conspiracy involving a sniper—or are there more than one?—and an assassination plot. He also inevitably finds himself paired with a possible romantic interest, the improbably named Casey Nice (“Nice by name, nice by nature”), about whom he muses, “Was there a finer place to be, than where those jeans were?” The plot quickly (in a Reacher novel, everything happens quickly) complicates itself like a chess match, as it turns out that only four snipers in the world have the capability of making the shot, each of a different nationality, each with his own country’s authorities pursuing him. One of them is a man Reacher sent to prison 16 years earlier and who has, conveniently enough, just been released. After a close call in Paris, our hero and Ms. Nice travel to London, where a gathering of global leaders will provide a convenient target (whomever the target turns out to be). At one point, when his partner reminds Reacher that there's no death penalty in Britain, he replies, “There is now,” with the sort of catchphrase bravado one might expect from Dirty Harry. Since Reacher has never been much of a team player or an organization man, the plot really shifts into high gear when he cuts himself loose and does what he does best.
Every Reacher novel delivers a jolt to the nervous system, but this lacks some of the stylistic flair that truly distinguishes Child.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8041-7874-7
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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