Thus far, the adventures of CIA-agent Blackford Oakes have followed him chronologically through the Fifties and early Sixties: from Saving the Queen to See You Later Alligator, from the Space Race to the Berlin Wall to the Cuban Missile Crisis. But now, in one of the series' weaker installments, Buckley returns to 1954—for a fanciful version of secret events leading up to the international recognition of West Germany and the execution of Soviet monster Lavrenti Beria. When a US/UK commando mission to "liberate" Albania fails miserably, Oakes and his CIA mentor Rufus realize that there's a monstrous leak in Anglo-American Intelligence security. So Oakes sets out to track down the problem (is there a "mole" in the CIA or MI6?), following a few strange London clues—including the sighting of a British commando leader who supposedly died in that failed Albanian coup! Meanwhile, however, the reader learns the real source of the leak: Sir Alistair Fleetwood, young Nobel-winning scientist, is a secret agent for the USSR. He has been using his astonishing invention, an electronic telescope called the "Zirca," to read teletypes (from 400 feet away) through the window of the US Embassy's cable office. Furthermore, Sir Alistair is in the midst of providing KGB-kingpin Beria with a copy of the Zirca—so that Beria can eavesdrop on Party leader Malenkov, whom he intends to depose and/or assassinate!! Will Oakes learn the secret of the Zirca in time to prevent the Beria coup, which would heat up the Cold War? That's the primary (and skimpy) suspense here, delivered in a plot that's less clever than contrived and disjointed. Under-par, too, is Buckley's use of history this time: none of the real-life figures (Beria, Malenkov, the Dulles brothers, Ike) comes across with freshness or vigor; the British queen and PM are confusingly imaginary (cf. Saving the Queen). And, while lacking the seriousness of Stained Glass or The Story of Henri Tod, this latest outing for Blackford Oakes—as bland and faceless a hero as usual—also lacks the stylish wit and sly charm of Buckley at his brightest (Who's On First, See You Later Alligator). Nonetheless: reasonably lively, relatively literate spy-diversion—especially in contrast to the lumbering idiocies of Robert Ludlum (below).
Pub Date: March 1, 1986
ISBN: 1888952520
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1986
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
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...
Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series (Stone Cold, 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.
Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.Pub Date: July 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-58321-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
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