A thickly detailed political thriller that skimps on character development.
In the last gasp of a post-colonial nation, its sultan reflects on the tragedies and horrors of his rule.
On a rainy night in 1947, the Irani Palace of the province of Sipheristan hosts a grand celebration, complete with drinks, dancing, and many beautiful contenders for the heart of its crown prince. His father, the Sultan Aslan, sits aside from the celebration, reflecting on the years of his rule and his service to both the province and the British. The colonial support that has allowed Sipheristan to expand and protect itself is withdrawing, bordering nations seek to absorb it, and America and the Soviet Union eye its natural resources. Furthermore, the Paradise Valley, as travelers have long called the area, hosts a diverse population of Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Hindus, their differences leading to increased sectarian violence. Mounting debt, challenges from charismatic yet cruel figures like Genghis Rasul, renewed Islamic conservatism, and family drama, such as that caused by the Sultan’s late, mentally unstable queen, have eroded trust and power. The rebels are at the door, quite literally, and Aslan looks back on his losses: his love affair with Swiss pilot Eva Piazinni, his 13-year-old daughter’s suicide and his son’s death fighting the Japanese, the murder and torture he inflicted on family, the political and socio-economic maneuvering with corrupt British leaders—all for his home. Chowdhury’s novel, well researched and well reasoned, crafts a fictitious country with all the political intrigue of any post-colonial nation after World War II. The impacts of droughts, insurgencies, love affairs, and scintillating land reforms are exactingly described. Sipheristan itself exudes culture, enveloping the reader in elaborate dances, architecture, and folklore, like the cursed Noor diamond. Yet for all this detail, even at its most engrossing the book tends to be fairly dry, written more like a history book than the epic novel its large cast and sweeping narrative promise. The intricacies of any economic or political decision are painstakingly broken down, but cast conflicts, such as the death of the crown prince’s mother and its effect on him or Aslan’s duality as a sympathetic leader, despite his willingness to torture children, go largely unexplored.
A thickly detailed political thriller that skimps on character development.Pub Date: Nov. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5069-0980-6
Page Count: 234
Publisher: First Edition Design Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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