This novel will make you shudder. It’s taut, credible, and scary.
Terrorism in America as imagined by a British Indian crime writer.
Eight days before the end of a toxic presidential campaign that’s “resting on a knife edge,” terrorists blow up a mall in Burbank, California. Sixty-five people die in the carnage, including a woman seen running away from the rucksack holding the bomb. FBI Special Agent Shreya Mistry wonders who the culprit is. Several candidates come to mind, like the “American Redemption fanatics, looking to bomb America back to greatness.” Then fingerprints identify the dead woman as Yasmin Malik, a British Muslim. “Why was she running?” Mistry wonders. “The question surfaced unbidden...a cork bobbing in the maelstrom of her mind.” The hunt is on for the perpetrators, and eyes are on innocent men like Sajid Khan. Was he “just another treacherous Muslim? Guilty until proven innocent”? But it’s more complicated. The bad guys follow the much-feared leader Miriam, a “soldier masquerading as messiah….Amish with a hint of assault rifle.” Some of them are former U.S. military like Greg, who nurses a lingering leg wound from combat and whose neck is tattooed with barbed wire and a swastika. Meanwhile, Mistry has personal baggage and professional problems. The agent hasn’t seen her daughter in months, and her FBI bosses don’t like how she operates—she isn’t called “Shreya Misfit” for nothing. And as befits a feisty hero, her suspension by the FBI doesn’t stop her as she tries to avert another horrific attack. As the constant action unfolds, the terrorists always seem to stay a step ahead of the FBI—it’s almost as if the bad guys have a mole inside the agency. Of the many good lines in the story, “hatred didn’t do nuance” may be the most apt.
This novel will make you shudder. It’s taut, credible, and scary.Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9780316260213
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Mulholland Books/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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