A cinematic and suspenseful spy novel.
After a terrorist cell acquires a nuclear bomb, an American intelligence operative strikes out on his own to stop them in this political thriller.
Connor Sloane, an audio surveillance operative in the CIA’s East Asia/Pacific counterintelligence department, comes across a cryptic phone call between an unknown man and Mohammad Hakimi, who has connections to Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Islamic State group. Unable to secure authorization from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to pursue the lead further, Connor decides to look into the matter on his own. Rothman, the author of The Inside Man (2019), generates a feeling of authenticity by explaining potentially unfamiliar protocols, such as the court’s role in granting sanction to “allow Connor to dig deeper through the local telephone records” and track Hakimi’s contacts. The author also effectively develops a theme of frustration with government regulations; whenever such rules come into play, Connor physically reacts: “slammed the heel of his hand against the desk,” “scoffed,” “chewed on his bottom lip,” “slammed his car door shut, then slapped the steering wheel hard with his palm.” Indeed, his barely contained rage earns him an invitation to join the Outfit, a shadow intelligence organization whose credo (“if it’s actionable, we act”) appeals to him. When Connor’s hunch proves correct and bombings begin to occur all over New York, Connor decides to work with the Outfit to stop the violence. Throughout the novel, Rothman delivers compellingly visual action scenes: “Three [men] down, and the only sounds had been the muffled pops from Connor’s silenced M4, the pinging of the bouncing brass, and the rustle of bodies falling.” Although some of these moments strain credulity, they’re entertaining, nonetheless.
A cinematic and suspenseful spy novel.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Primordial Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A fun read. Terrorists make great Clancy fodder.
Evildoers plan attacks from America to India, and Jack Ryan Jr. is a prime target.
In Washington state, a man and his family are murdered, and President Jack Ryan learns it is another Poseidon Spear incident. Three retired members of that counterterrorism group have been killed now, and the U.S. government suspects a mole in its midst. Meanwhile, the Umayyad Revolutionary Council believes it has a holy and wholly anti-American mission. Against this backdrop, Jack Ryan Jr., and his fiancée, Lisanne Robertson, visit Delhi, India, to attend the wedding of Srini Rai, the brilliant surgeon who attached Lisanne’s prosthetic left arm. Lisanne had lost her arm in Tom Clancy Shadow of the Dragon (2020). Jack and Lisanne are both operators working for the Campus, a covert group that executes secret presidential directives. A wedding is a happy occasion, and the engaged American couple intend the trip as a vacation. Jack and Lisanne will attend a sangeet, an elaborate pre-wedding party. But it isn’t long before they survive a suicide bomb attack. As with all Clancy novels, there’s plenty of action on a global scale. In simultaneous strikes, terrorists plan to contaminate America’s Western water supply with radioactive waste from Washington’s Hanford nuclear power plant, blow up a spectacular new bridge in Kashmir, and kill the evil Ryan—or Junior, at least. It will be At-Takwir, the end of days. There is an appealing mix of Indian culture, high-speed action, and the rich lode of details that characterizes the whole series. And in the background lingers the question on several characters’ minds: Have Jack and Lisanne set their own wedding date?
A fun read. Terrorists make great Clancy fodder.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9780593718032
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
A sometimes shocking, sometimes mocking look at the Israeli-Iranian conflict.
In the latest novel by former CIA analyst McCloskey, a Swedish Jewish dentist of Iranian origins who becomes a Mossad operative in Tehran faces death after his capture by the enemy.
How Kamran Esfahani became part of a covert unit responsible for kidnappings, arms smuggling, and assassinations in Iran is laid out in the confession he is forced to write over and over by his chief torturer, known only as the General. Protective of crucial secrets, the confession takes the form of a novel within the novel, covering Kam’s recruitment by Israeli intelligence officer Arik Glitzman and his training in Albania. “Steady dental or surgical hands, it turns out, are quite useful for picking locks and capturing crystal-clear photographs on a wide range of subminiature cameras,” Kam writes. But other skills are required to recruit an Iranian woman whose husband was killed by Mossad and to elude the Jew-targeting Qods Force. With its snarky tone and its conflicted protagonist’s California dreams, McCloskey’s novel is reminiscent of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer (2015). Musing on Glitzman’s comments about assassination-assigned Israeli forces “killing to save lives,” Kam writes, “Why not fuck for chastity while you’re at it?” But the humor is swept aside by a horrific drone attack on a Mossad couple’s Jerusalem apartment and the severed head of a suicide-bombing Palestinian boy “rocket[ing]” through a salon window. Responding to Glitzman’s claim that the Israelis never put a target’s family in danger, his opposite number, Col. Ghorbani, says, “How about the thousands of Palestinian women and children you’ve bombed or shot or starved?” In probing the deep moral and practical complexities of this shadow war, McCloskey’s novel could not be more timely or unsettling, all humor aside.
A sometimes shocking, sometimes mocking look at the Israeli-Iranian conflict.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2025
ISBN: 9781324123194
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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