Lightweight, overextended, and utterly inconsequential, as long as you don’t happen to be one of those hoodlums.
The marital woes of a friend and client’s great-niece lead Stone Barrington into trouble in an utterly unexpected way. That’s the last unexpected thing that happens.
Sara Hirschy’s estranged husband in Chicago is doing everything he can to slow-walk their divorce, and her lawyer isn’t helping much. So Stone promises her uncle, Jack Coulter, that he’ll do what he can to help. Within minutes of their meeting, though, it’s Jack who needs help, because he’s spotted by an old confederate who (correctly) thinks he recognizes him as Johnny Fratelli, who spent close to five years in prison, and fingers him to mobster Ricky Gennaro, who has excellent reasons for wanting Fratelli dead. As Stone, who’s old enough to be Sara’s father, chastely finds a new lawyer for her and moves on to his own less icky romance with Tamlyn Thompson, the new chief technical officer of Strategic Services, word spreads through New York’s underworld that Fratelli, whose cellmate was the late Eduardo Buono, mastermind of the legendary JFK Airport heist, has been given a new nose and a new identity, and the vultures begin to circle. Stone and Jack Coulter still find time to fly to England, where Stone’s old friend and lover Dame Felicity Devonshire throws a party to announce her impending retirement as head of MI6. Even before they return, though, Gennaro starts his campaign of vengeance. The body count, initially slow to ascend, accelerates rapidly as different cabals of gangsters compete with each other for that missing robbery haul. But it’s hard to care very much about which disposable bad guy will dispose of the other disposable bad guys and come out on top.
Lightweight, overextended, and utterly inconsequential, as long as you don’t happen to be one of those hoodlums.Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9780593854716
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fun read. Terrorists make great Clancy fodder.
Evildoers plan attacks from America to India, and Jack Ryan Jr. is a prime target.
In Washington state, a man and his family are murdered, and President Jack Ryan learns it is another Poseidon Spear incident. Three retired members of that counterterrorism group have been killed now, and the U.S. government suspects a mole in its midst. Meanwhile, the Umayyad Revolutionary Council believes it has a holy and wholly anti-American mission. Against this backdrop, Jack Ryan Jr., and his fiancée, Lisanne Robertson, visit Delhi, India, to attend the wedding of Srini Rai, the brilliant surgeon who attached Lisanne’s prosthetic left arm. Lisanne had lost her arm in Tom Clancy Shadow of the Dragon (2020). Jack and Lisanne are both operators working for the Campus, a covert group that executes secret presidential directives. A wedding is a happy occasion, and the engaged American couple intend the trip as a vacation. Jack and Lisanne will attend a sangeet, an elaborate pre-wedding party. But it isn’t long before they survive a suicide bomb attack. As with all Clancy novels, there’s plenty of action on a global scale. In simultaneous strikes, terrorists plan to contaminate America’s Western water supply with radioactive waste from Washington’s Hanford nuclear power plant, blow up a spectacular new bridge in Kashmir, and kill the evil Ryan—or Junior, at least. It will be At-Takwir, the end of days. There is an appealing mix of Indian culture, high-speed action, and the rich lode of details that characterizes the whole series. And in the background lingers the question on several characters’ minds: Have Jack and Lisanne set their own wedding date?
A fun read. Terrorists make great Clancy fodder.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9780593718032
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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