A riveting tale of bad guys all around, engaging from start to finish.
A swift-paced exposé of the Northern Irish Troubles and the fraught interactions among British intelligence and the Irish Republican Army.
Hemming, the author of Agent M and Agents of Influence, delivers a true-crime tale narrated with the skills of a whodunit pro. The author opens with the murder of a British agent, his body left beside a country lane. The British agent was also a member of the IRA, with responsibilities that included storing weapons used in the war against Britain. He was killed, Hemming charges, by another IRA member, possibly on the orders of Martin McGuinness, who became a prominent politician in Northern Ireland and was famously granted an audience with Queen Elizabeth II, an interaction that speaks to the well-worn observation about Northern Irish politics: “If you’re not confused, you don’t know what’s going on.” The killing, notes the author, was marked by “savage intimacy,” carefully planned from start to finish; the IRA leadership surely knew about it beforehand, but MI5 may have had an inkling before the fact as well. Hemming writes confidently of matters that the IRA has surely tried to keep silent—not just political murders but also everyday tactics, such as the use of dog and horse transports to move weapons around, those transports being difficult for British canine sniffers to expose. One extraordinary revelation is that British intelligence had so thoroughly infiltrated the IRA that the organization was brought to an effective standstill, its stalwarts not knowing whom to trust. One British handler reveals that military intelligence wanted to force the IRA out of the military and into the political arena, against the wishes of the British government—even if Margaret Thatcher, Hemming notes, did authorize secret negotiations to curb the bloodshed.
A riveting tale of bad guys all around, engaging from start to finish.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781541703186
Page Count: 368
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Feb. 10, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
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