A novel that delivers pretty much everything Silva’s fans want.
Silva takes his hero to where this bestselling series began.
Fans have gotten used to a new Gabriel Allon book every summer. Anyone wondering what the former head of Mossad might be doing during the war in Gaza will not find an answer here. This is bad news, maybe, for readers who appreciate Silva’s engagement with real-world politics, but it’s good news for those looking to this series for escape. This narrative is set in motion by the death of an art historian trying to reconnect a Picasso painting stolen by the Nazis with its rightful owner. Allon is drawn into this mystery by an old acquaintance from Cornwall, the place where he tried to escape his past and where readers first met him in The Kill Artist (2000). As he did in The Collector (2023), the author focuses on Allon’s connections to the art world, rather than his tenure as an assassin and intelligence operative. None of this is to say that Allon doesn’t make use of spycraft and his network of powerful international contacts. Although longtime fans may miss their favorite members of his old crew, there are plenty of familiar characters here. Allon enlists the help of hacker and master thief Ingrid Johansen and violin virtuoso Anna Rolfe. And it’s Timothy Peel—all grown up—who asks Allon for help investigating a seemingly simple case of murder that isn’t simple at all. All of this is fun enough, but it also feels a bit static. In Portrait of an Unknown Woman (2022), Allon whipped up passable forgeries of works by Renaissance masters like Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese in a matter of days. Here, his plan for recovering a Picasso requires him to produce convincing lost paintings by modernists and postmodernists with wildly different styles. The glimpses into Allon’s family life also feel rote. Silva’s fans know that Chiara can do much more than cook and smile while her husband goes off on his adventures.
A novel that delivers pretty much everything Silva’s fans want.Pub Date: July 9, 2024
ISBN: 9780063384200
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
Maybe not the most thrilling thriller, but the role of AI in coping with grief gives this novel pathos and interest.
A widowed and disgraced plastic surgeon is drawn into a Russian oligarch’s evil schemes.
Witherspoon’s adult fiction debut, co-authored with thrillermeister Coben, opens as heart surgery performed by Dr. Marc Adams in a North African refugee camp is interrupted by the explosive invasion of armed militants. It's the last we will see of Marc in this dimension. The next chapter jumps ahead one year to a ceremony at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore where his widow, Maggie McCabe, is supposed to be presenting an award in honor of her mother. Miserable and anxious about appearing in public after having lost her medical license, she consults with her late husband on her phone—not via supernatural means, but using a "griefbot," an amazingly lifelike and functional AI app created by her genius sister, Sharon. Once the griefbot coaxes her to brave the sneering masses, she learns she’s been replaced on the podium anyway. But she runs into a former professor, a celebrity plastic surgeon, who requests a meeting with her at his office in New York and won’t take no for an answer. Next thing she knows, there’s $10 million in her bank account and she’s on a private plane heading to a palace outside Moscow where she’s been engaged to perform off-the-record surgery on billionaire Oleg Ragoravich (new face) and his girlfriend, Nadia (new boobs). And…we’re off. A whirl of surgeries, chases, and escapes ensues as Maggie gradually comes to understand who these people are and what they have in mind for her, and how it connects to Marc and their missing friend and business partner, Trace Packer. She is aided by her delightful father-in-law, Porkchop, owner of a biker bar in New York City and a very handy guy to have on your team if you've run afoul of an international criminal organization. From the palace in Rublevka the action moves to Dubai and then Bordeaux, climaxing in a high-stakes illegal heart transplant. But wait—is Marc really dead? What happened to Trace? Who is Nadia really? Though these smoldering questions don’t quite catch fire, it's a good first try for Witherspoon.
Maybe not the most thrilling thriller, but the role of AI in coping with grief gives this novel pathos and interest.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781538774700
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Fast-moving and disturbingly plausible.
Robots may be the future of warfare in this final father-son DeMille collaboration.
In Camp Hayden, Army Maj. Roger Ames is found dead, his skull crushed. Chief Warrant Officers Scott Brodie and Maggie Taylor, special agents of the United States Army Criminal Investigation Division, are sent to the Mojave Desert, “a.k.a. in the middle of nowhere,” to investigate. In this fictional military installation, Army Rangers conduct field training exercises with lethal autonomous weapons. These “dangerous new toys,” nicknamed “tin men,” may become the future of warfare if they can be programmed to distinguish between friend and foe. Anyway, the Rangers’ job is to train the tin men, not the other way around. They are AI-driven robotic prototypes called D-17s, but even prototypes can kill. Did a bot kill the major? And was there criminal liability or intent, or was it a tragic accident? Brodie and Taylor discover that not everyone loves these beasts, and they must find out if humans are programming them for mischief or even trying to set up the program for failure. Meanwhile, the bots have nicknames. Bot number 20 is Bucky, seen on a video as a “seven-foot-tall titanium machine with hands covered in blood and brain matter” that has “a face but no eyes, with hands but no skin, with a body but no soul.” As scary as these beasties are, Brodie and Taylor must also look at the humans at Camp Hayden, because they learn that the “machines don’t have motives….They have inputs and outputs,” which naturally come from human programmers. They have neither brains nor courage nor honor; they do have brute force, speed, and agility. Obviously, plenty goes haywire in this enjoyable yarn. It feels a bit too believable for comfort, and that’s to the DeMilles’ credit as storytellers. Nelson DeMille had begun this project with his son Alex, who had to finish it alone after his father’s death.
Fast-moving and disturbingly plausible.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781501101878
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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