A meticulously detailed spy story that delivers action, international intrigue, and seductive romance.
In Wiegmann’s novel, a spy sabotages Germany’s V2 rocket development in an attempt to save the Allies from a ghastly weapon of destruction.
Mathias Jansen is a young engineer working in Germany in the late 1930s. He is no fan of Hitler and the Nazis, so he’s recruited as a spy inside the Fatherland. His one assignment is to sabotage and thus slow the development of the V2 rocket, one of Hitler’s so-called wonder weapons. He is also in love with Marie Parisi, who has similar feelings for him and also hates the Nazis. Every story needs a good archvillain, and here it’s Walter Mayer, a memorably sadistic and ambitious Gestapo officer. Jansen speaks fluent German and is patriotic, brave, and as handsome as Marie is beautiful. After specialized training (guns, explosives, etc.) he is parachuted into occupied Poland along with a pallet of explosives and other equipment. His job is to find and destroy the factories that produce the various deadly components of the V2. He is successful in sabotaging three or four suppliers but is finally caught and spends 18 months imprisoned and brutally tortured on a daily basis at the hands of Mayer. Marie is also tracked down and treated in a similar fashion. Wiegmann is a natural storyteller, seamlessly weaving his characters Jansen, Parisi, and Mayer into the larger historical fabric, which features real-life figures like Wild Bill Donovan, Wernher von Braun, and Robert Goddard. (Helpfully, the author also includes an afterword listing all the historical figures included in the novel and a brief minibiography of each.) Particularly well rendered are the training sessions in spycraft in which Jansen proves an ideal pupil and the dramatic run-ins with the Gestapo. There are also torture scenes that are so vividly drawn they may be hard for some readers to stomach. The only real downside here is occasionally stiff dialogue (“Lieutenant, you and men like you make me proud to wear this uniform”) reminiscent of propaganda films that Hollywood was churning out during the war. But issues like these are minor and can’t detract from the novel’s page-turning plot and believable action.
A meticulously detailed spy story that delivers action, international intrigue, and seductive romance.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 145
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A pulpy throwback that shines a light on abuses even magic can’t erase.
Hung out to dry by the elders who betrayed them, a squad of pregnant teens fights back with old magic.
Hendrix has a flair for applying inventive hooks to horror, and this book has a good one, chock-full with shades of V.C. Andrews, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Foxfire, to name a few. Our narrator, Neva Craven, is 15 and pregnant, a fate worse than death in the American South circa 1970. She’s taken by force to Wellwood House in Florida, a secretive home for unwed mothers where she’s given the name Fern. She’ll have the baby secretly and give it up for adoption, whether she likes it or not. Under the thumb of the house’s cruel mistress, Miss Wellwood, and complicit Dr. Vincent, Neva forges cautious alliance with her fellow captives—a new friend, Zinnia; budding revolutionary Rose; and young Holly, raped and impregnated by the very family minister slated to adopt her child. All seems lost until the arrival of a mysterious bookmobile and its librarian, Miss Parcae, who gives the girls an actual book of spells titled How To Be a Groovy Witch. There’s glee in seeing the powerless granted some well-deserved payback, but Hendrix never forgets his sweet spot, lacing the story with body horror and unspeakable cruelties that threaten to overwhelm every little victory. In truth, it’s not the paranormal elements that make this blast from the past so terrifying—although one character evolves into a suitably scary antagonist near the end—but the unspeakable, everyday atrocities leveled at children like these. As the girls lose their babies one by one, they soon devote themselves to secreting away Holly and her child. They get some help late in the game but for the most part they’re on their own, trapped between forces of darkness and society’s merciless judgement.
A pulpy throwback that shines a light on abuses even magic can’t erase.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9780593548981
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.
A successful Vermont podcaster who’s elicited confessions from dozens of criminals finds herself on the other side of the table, in the hottest of hot seats, over her own troubled past.
Poe Webb was only 13 when she saw her mother, Margaret McMillian, get stabbed to death by the man she’d picked up for a quickie. Poe had vowed revenge, but how could a kid find and avenge herself on a stranger who’d vanished as quickly as he appeared? In the long years since then, Poe’s made a name for herself as a top true-crime podcaster who routinely invites her guests to tell her audience exactly what they did. Now, she’s being pressed, and pressed hard, by Ian Hindley, whose fake name echoes those of England’s Moors Murderers, to join him in a livestream her fans will find riveting because, as Hindley tells her, he’s actually Leopold Hutchins, the pickup who stabbed her mother 14 times when she failed to use her safe word. Skeptical? Hindley knows endless details about the killing that were never released by the police. If Poe won’t do the broadcast, Hindley threatens to harm everyone she loves: her father; her producer and lover, Kip Nguyen; and her black Lab, Bailey. And there’s one more complication that makes the pressure on Poe even more unbearable. Seven years ago, against all odds, she succeeded in tracking Leopold Hutchins from Burlington to New York and killing him herself. In fact, it’s that murder that Hindley most wants her to talk about. Which bully is more fearsome, the man who’s threatening her or the man she killed?
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781464226229
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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