A grim but often engaging missing-person tale.
In Gerard-Alesco’s thriller, an American ex-pat in Thailand stumbles into a world of drug trafficking and shifting alliances when he tries to find a missing friend.
Greg Robber is an oddly named young man with a gift for languages. He’s recruited by a CIA man named Elliot at Oxford’s Christ Church College in England, and then sent to the Thai village of Chiang Mai. Greg’s cover is that he’s taking notes and photos to write a book about the customs of the hill people, but his real mission is to “watch, listen, and report” on the local drug trade to Elliot. In the process, Greg befriends some idealistic Westerners, including Albie Saint Clair, a wealthy geophysicist, who sets up a research facility, hoping to end the local practice of slashing and burning teak forests to grow opium, and Mary Peyton, a saintly nun who runs a health clinic. But a malevolent figure known as Fat Man runs a local gambling establishment, compels local businesses to pay protection, and distributes opium. His vicious offspring, Fat Boy, is his enforcer. When Greg’s initial mission ends, he stays on as Albie’s translator—but then Albie disappears. Greg searches for his friend in Thailand and then crosses the Burmese border, fearing that the worst has happened. Gerard-Alesco adeptly creates a corrupt world that recalls the work of Raymond Chandler with its morally ambiguous characters. Some villagers destroy forests and grow opium, for instance, but they do so for survival and are shown to be otherwise upstanding. Even the book’s central player, Greg, is far from a hero: He cares about his friends, but he allows his loyal pal Wes to express racist, antigay, and misogynist views unchallenged. The protagonist is also effectively shown to be lustful, uncertain, and aimless, and he allows others, including Elliot and Albie’s sister, Gwen, to determine his fate for him. The author also paints a vivid picture of Thailand, in which tour buses mingle with water buffalo–drawn carts on the streets. Overall, the picturesque setting, flawed protagonist, and noir atmosphere make this thriller stand out.
A grim but often engaging missing-person tale.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9781629672625
Page Count: 366
Publisher: Wise Media Group
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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