Masterful writing and a hot pursuit across Europe elevate this novel. Men in gray flannel suits haven’t been this exciting...
A British civil servant joins his friend’s impossible quest to solve one of history’s most perplexing murder mysteries.
A dizzying array of locales enlivens this ever-polite but extremely engaging thriller from British novelist Goddard (Long Time Coming, 2010, etc). The essential question of the book asks: How far would you go for an old friend? In this case, the conflicted man is Richard Eusden, an aging bureaucrat in the Foreign Office whose weariness with life belies his willingness to help those in need. One morning, Richard is overcome by Gemma Conway, his ex-wife. Gemma wants Richard to help her other ex-husband, Marty Hewitson, his best friend from nearly 40 years ago. These two complete the great triangle of the man’s life. “Marty Hewitson was the best and closest friend he would ever have,” Goddard writes. “And he would never love another woman as he had loved Gemma Conway. Those were the facts of his life. He could not alter them. He could not wish them away. Even if he wanted to. Which of course he did not.” Richard anxiously accedes to Gemma’s request to escort a mysterious briefcase to Brussels. But when he disembarks, a man named Werner Straub shows Richard pictures of Marty, bound, gagged and imprisoned in the city. After giving up the briefcase, Richard frees Marty, who turns out to be eccentric, acerbic and dying of a brain tumor. Together, this odd couple sets off to find the briefcase. It’s tied to the famous real-life court case involving Anna Anderson, the German mental patient who claimed to be the surviving Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia.
Masterful writing and a hot pursuit across Europe elevate this novel. Men in gray flannel suits haven’t been this exciting in quite some time.Pub Date: Feb. 22, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-385-34362-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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
Eskens’ debut is a solid and thoughtful tale of a young man used to taking on burdens beyond his years—none more dangerous...
A struggling student’s English assignment turns into a mission to solve a 30-year-old murder.
Joe Talbert has had very few breaks in his 21 years. The son of a single and very alcoholic mother, he’s worked hard to save enough money to leave his home in Austin, Minnesota, for the University of Minnesota. Although he has to leave his autistic younger brother, Jeremy Naylor, to the dubious care of their mother, Joe is determined to beat the odds and get his degree. For an assignment in his English class, he decides to interview Carl Iverson, a man convicted of raping and killing a 14-year-old girl. Carl, who maintains his innocence, is dying of cancer and has been released to a nursing home to end his life in lonely but unrepentant pain. The more Joe learns about Carl—a Vietnam vet with two Purple Hearts and a Silver Cross—the more the young man questions the conviction. Joe’s plan to write a short biography and earn an easy A turns into something more. Even after his mother is arrested for drunk driving and guilt-trips Joe into ransacking his college fund to bail her out, he soldiers on with the project, though her irresponsibility forces him to take Jeremy into his care. But it’s his younger brother who cracks the code of the long-dead murder victim’s secret diary and an attractive neighbor, Lila Nash, who has her own agenda for helping Joe solve the mystery, whatever the risk.
Eskens’ debut is a solid and thoughtful tale of a young man used to taking on burdens beyond his years—none more dangerous than championing a bitter old man convicted of a horrific crime.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61614-998-7
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Seventh Street Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
