A simple yet delightfully left-field take on a fight against oppression.
Murray offers a near-future thriller sequel about a war on personal freedom.
In the first series installment, New York City was shown to have been taken over by a government that’s hostile to individual rights, particularly regarding religion. Enforcers known as Thought Police have the power to arrest and detain anyone. As one character explains it, they “don't believe in religion or moral values. They just act on the orders they are given by the soulless city government.” Two Jewish people in their 40s, Sue and David, fled to Long Island. The Thought Police don’t have jurisdiction there, and it’s home to a hotel turned safehouse run by Hilda, a leading member of the rebellious New York Freedom Fighters. She was kidnapped by the Thought Police at the end of the previous book, but her fellow Freedom Fighters find her, and she has ideas on how to fight against the city. To kick things off, several of her organization’s members, including Sue and David, head into Manhattan to rescue some Jewish people being held against their will in an apartment. The entire gang conduct the operation dressed as Batman; if anyone asks any questions, they plan to say that they’re merely in the city for a costume party. Although the mission is a success, it’s clear that much more will be required to make a dent in the oppressive society and to foil the Thought Police’s plan for an all-out assault on the city. David reflects on his new existence: “My life had become like an action movie.”
As in an action film, things move quickly in this brief book. No sooner has Hilda recovered from her abduction ordeal that she’s ready to try something new. “The cowards didn't have the guts to kill me,” she says of her kidnappers. And, indeed, throughout the story, the villains continually prove to be inept. The Freedom Fighters, by contrast, are highly skilled—sometimes despite themselves. For example, at one point, David says, “I don't know much about guns. I'm not sure how to fire it,” but he still manages to shoot a moving vehicle while riding in another. Such moments, combined with a mostly bloodless storyline (although there are some deaths) gives the story a unique feel that’s much different from a traditional thriller. It certainly proves to be stranger and more playful than one might expect in a work about a citywide totalitarian government. For instance, as in the first installment, there are dogs in the middle of the fray; when David is preparing to take the fateful shot, for instance, Sue, who’s in the car with him, struggles to keep a canine named Tim from “jumping up to look out the window.” The animal is humorously subdued with the help of some peanut butter cookies. Although it seems clear early on that the good guys will emerge triumphant (either in this volume or a later one), the fun comes in following the offbeat path they travel along the way.
A simple yet delightfully left-field take on a fight against oppression.Pub Date: April 8, 2022
ISBN: 9798449217967
Page Count: 108
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 3, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
As usual, Evanovich handles the funny stuff better (much better) than the mystery stuff.
Stephanie Plum’s 31st adventure shows that Trenton’s preeminent fugitive-apprehension agent still has plenty of tricks up her sleeve, and needs every one of them.
The current caseload for Stephanie and Lula—the ex-prostitute file clerk at her cousin Vincent Plum’s bail bonds company, who serves as her unflappable sidekick—begins with two “failures to appear.” Eugene Fleck is suspected of being Robin Hoodie, who robs from the rich and, yes, distributes the proceeds to the poor. Racketeer Bruno Jug, who’s missed his court date on charges of tax evasion, is also suspected of drugging and raping a 14-year-old. But neither of these fugitives can hold a candle to Zoran Djordjevic, aka Fang, a self-proclaimed vampire wanted in connection with the gruesome fate of his late wife and three other missing women. As usual, Stephanie’s personal life is just as helter-skelter as her professional life as a bounty hunter. She’s managed to get herself engaged both to Det. Joe Morelli, of the Trenton PD, and Ranger, a former Special Forces agent who runs a private security firm; she thinks she may be pregnant; and she’s willing to marry the father, whichever of her fiances that turns out to be. On top of it all, her nothingburger schoolmate Herbert Slovinski suddenly pops up at one of the funerals she ferries her Grandma Mazur to, hitting on her relentlessly and gilding his importunities by cleaning and painting her shabby apartment and laying new carpet. Luckily, Lula’s on hand to offer cupcakes that stave off the worst disasters, and whenever this hodgepodge threatens to slow down, another FTA appears, or fails to appear.
As usual, Evanovich handles the funny stuff better (much better) than the mystery stuff.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781668003138
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
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
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