Despite the allegedly high stakes, Woods delivers all the facile thrills of an unusually sedate video game.
Being president-elect of the United States is no bed of roses for former Secretary of State Holly Barker, who’s marked for assassination even before she takes the oath of office.
Retired Army Col. Wade Sykes, aka Watchman, and his white supremacist cabal, who’ve somehow managed to tolerate the presidency of Katharine Lee, have drawn a line in the sand since Holly was elected in the closing pages of Hit List (2020). Luckily, Holly has a secret weapon: her sometime lover Stone Barrington, the New York lawyer who survived his own targeting for death in the same installment. The first attempt on Holly’s life, which appropriately takes place during a secret vacation at Stone’s place in Dark Harbor, Maine, leaves six dispensable Secret Service agents dead but doesn’t muss Holly’s hair. So Sykes and company, nothing daunted, try again in a series of increasingly improbable locations. For all their pains, Holly, a longtime franchise character, is probably a lot safer than Elizabeth Potter, a brand-new undercover FBI agent who’s infiltrated Sykes’ inner circle without quite winning his unconditional trust. As she twists slowly in the wind, she notices that another Sykes intimate seems to be acting like a double agent too. Wonder how that will work out—especially given Stone’s bleak reflection that “it could be like this for the next eight years”?
Despite the allegedly high stakes, Woods delivers all the facile thrills of an unusually sedate video game.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-18829-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.
Four residents of Coopers Chase, a British retirement village, compete with the police to solve a murder in this debut novel.
The Thursday Murder Club started out with a group of septuagenarians working on old murder cases culled from the files of club founder Elizabeth Best’s friend Penny Gray, a former police officer who's now comatose in the village's nursing home. Elizabeth used to have an unspecified job, possibly as a spy, that has left her with a large network of helpful sources. Joyce Meadowcroft is a former nurse who chronicles their deeds. Psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif and well-known political firebrand Ron Ritchie complete the group. They charm Police Constable Donna De Freitas, who, visiting to give a talk on safety at Coopers Chase, finds the residents sharp as tacks. Built with drug money on the grounds of a convent, Coopers Chase is a high-end development conceived by loathsome Ian Ventham and maintained by dangerous crook Tony Curran, who’s about to be fired and replaced with wary but willing Bogdan Jankowski. Ventham has big plans for the future—as soon as he’s removed the nuns' bodies from the cemetery. When Curran is murdered, DCI Chris Hudson gets the case, but Elizabeth uses her influence to get the ambitious De Freitas included, giving the Thursday Club a police source. What follows is a fascinating primer in detection as British TV personality Osman allows the members to use their diverse skills to solve a series of interconnected crimes.
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-98-488096-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
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: tomorrow
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