While some characters strain credulity, this gripping spy tale offers entertaining and realistic details.
This post–Cold War international thriller focuses on a mysterious artifact.
It is 1989, and the Soviet Union is leaving Afghanistan. Things have not been going well for the Soviets, yet they go even worse for helicopter pilot Dmitry Antonov. Dmitry’s helicopter crashes while transporting highly secretive cargo. His fate looks grim at best. Fast-forward to 2009. Dmitry’s daughter, Sonya, is a highly educated, butt-kicking member of Israel’s Mossad with a penchant for Russian caravan tea. Sonya not only knows her way around several languages, she can also handle a Mark 12 special purpose rifle with ease and dress for a night of seduction at the drop of a hat. Early in the narrative, Sonya ventures to Boston to see an old acquaintance at Harvard Divinity School. The Rev. Daniel Callan is a street-smart academic with a higher calling to God. Though his feelings present a thorny complication, Danny has long been attracted to Sonya. Perhaps the only thing that interests him more is what Sonya has brought to Boston: an apparently ancient palimpsest that has been written on vellum. Danny will use his connections and know-how to get to the bottom of this enigmatic item. The palimpsest proves to be the opening to a long, winding, and violent adventure. It may be the key to discovering the supposed “suitcase nukes” that went missing after the fall of the Soviet Union. It may be a link to a great number of other priceless artifacts. It may even help Sonya find her father.
Joyce’s novel is one that overflows with vivid particulars. Readers get a primer on everything from the Bauhaus influence on Tel Aviv architecture to the KGB–developed PSS silent pistol. Unlike in some tales of international danger and espionage, the characters here are not simply running roughshod throughout the world. They are visiting places intensely affected by important historical events. The United States forces in Afghanistan must deal with lingering aspects of the Soviet presence in that country. Local environments dictate protocol. Some destinations require passports, some visas, others American cigarettes. Yet among such nuanced, illustrative material are aspects that prove less necessary or even dull. Many characters are created with in-depth, fantastical backgrounds. Danny is not just an avid Red Sox fan with a penchant for boxing, he also turns out to be a more than capable rower who learns the Dari language in his spare time. Despite a harried schedule, he even makes time for dinner with his mother once a week, taking the opportunity to discuss local real estate trends. Likewise, an extensive story about how Danny and Sonya formed a relationship adds little to the overall excitement. Still, there’s loads of perilous stuff out there for even highly intelligent, motivated, and physically fit people like Danny and Sonya to encounter. The thrills come in seeing how all the aspects of this multifaceted world will eventually come together in a desolate place in the Hindu Kush mountain range in Asia.
While some characters strain credulity, this gripping spy tale offers entertaining and realistic details.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 477
Publisher: Heretic Publications
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Intrigue, murder, and vengeance make for a darkly enjoyable read.
A woman’s life takes a stunning turn and a wall comes tumbling down in this tense Cold War spy drama.
In Berlin in 1989, the wall is about to crumble, and Anne Simpson’s husband, Stefan Koehler, goes missing. She is a translator working with refugees from the communist bloc, and he is a piano tuner who travels around Europe with orchestras. Or so he claims. German intelligence service the BND and America’s CIA bring her in for questioning, wrongly thinking she’s protecting him. Soon she begins to learn more about Stefan, whom she had met in the Netherlands a few years ago. She realizes he’s a “gregarious musician with easy charm who collected friends like a beachcomber collects shells, keeping a few, discarding most.” Police find his wallet in a canal and his prized zither in nearby bushes but not his body. Has he been murdered? What’s going on? And why does the BND care? If Stefan is alive, he’s in deep trouble, because he’s believed to be working for the Stasi. She’s told “the dead have a way of showing up. It is only the living who hide.” And she’s quite believable when she wonders, “Can you grieve for someone who betrayed you?” Smart and observant, she notes that the reaction by one of her interrogators is “as false as his toupee. Obvious, uncalled for, and easily put on.” Lurking behind the scenes is the Matchmaker, who specializes in finding women—“American. Divorced. Unhappy,” and possibly having access to Western secrets—who will fall for one of his Romeos. Anne is the perfect fit. “The matchmaker turned love into tradecraft,” a CIA agent tells her. But espionage is an amoral business where duty trumps decency, and “deploring the morality of spies is like deploring violence in boxers.” It’s a sentiment John le Carré would have endorsed, but Anne may have the final word.
Intrigue, murder, and vengeance make for a darkly enjoyable read.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64313-865-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pegasus Crime
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.
Coulter’s treasured FBI agents take on two cases marked by danger and personal involvement.
Dillon Savitch and his wife, Lacey Sherlock, have special abilities that have served them well in law enforcement (Paradox, 2018, etc.). But that doesn't prevent Sherlock’s car from hitting a running man after having been struck by a speeding SUV that runs a red light. The runner, though clearly injured, continues on his way and disappears. Not so the SUV driver, a security engineer for the Bexholt Group, which has ties to government agencies. Sherlock’s own concussion causes memory loss so severe that she doesn’t recognize Savitch or remember their son, Sean. The whole incident seems more suspicious when a blood test from the splatter of the man Sherlock hit reveals that he’s Justice Cummings, an analyst for the CIA. The agency’s refusal to cooperate makes Savitch certain that Bexholt is involved in a deep-laid plot. Meanwhile, Special Agent Griffin Hammersmith is visiting friends who run a cafe in the touristy Virginia town of Gaffers Ridge. Hammersmith, who has psychic abilities, is taken aback when he hears in his mind a woman’s cry for help. Reporter Carson DeSilva, who came to the area to interview a Nobel Prize winner, also has psychic abilities, and she overhears the thoughts of Rafer Bodine, a young man who has apparently kidnapped and possibly murdered three teenage girls. Unluckily, she blurts out her thoughts, and she’s snatched and tied up in a cellar by Bodine. Bodine may be a killer, but he’s also the nephew of the sheriff and the son of the local bigwig. So the sheriff arrests Hammersmith and refuses to accept his FBI credentials. Bodine's mother has psychic powers strong enough to kill, but she meets her match in Hammersmith, DeSilva, Savitch, and Sherlock.
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.Pub Date: July 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9365-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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