A parable of reclaiming personal and tribal identity by seizing power at all costs.
A debut whose larger-than-life heroine is a Miami-based assassin for the African Tribal Council.
This novel begins with a series of trigger warnings, so you can be sure you’re in for a wild ride with Nena Knight, nee Aninyeh Ama Asym, code-named Echo, as she alternately takes down her people’s enemies and explains the background that made her who she is. Shuttling back and forth between Aninyeh’s childhood in N’nkakuwe, a village in Ghana led by her father, Michael Asym, and a present in which Nena and her crack team methodically execute enemies of the Tribe, Angoe presents Michael’s betrayal by his old school friend Paul Frempong; the deaths of Michael and most of his family members; the gang rape of Aninyeh and the burning of the village; Aninyeh’s sale into slavery; her escape and adoption by Noble Knight, High Council of the Tribe; and her training as a skilled assassin. Nena’s violent but satisfying life is upended when she unexpectedly meets Cortland Baxter, a U.S. federal attorney targeted by the Tribe at the request of wealthy businessman Lucien Douglas, whom the Council is eager to add to their numbers, and decides that she can’t kill him, at least partly because she’s falling for him. The stakes in her disobedience rapidly mount as she realizes she’s not the only person to walk away from the massacre at N’nkakuwe and assume a new identity.
A parable of reclaiming personal and tribal identity by seizing power at all costs.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2995-7
Page Count: 431
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2021
PERSPECTIVES
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
Intrigue, murder, and vengeance make for a darkly enjoyable read.
A woman’s life takes a stunning turn and a wall comes tumbling down in this tense Cold War spy drama.
In Berlin in 1989, the wall is about to crumble, and Anne Simpson’s husband, Stefan Koehler, goes missing. She is a translator working with refugees from the communist bloc, and he is a piano tuner who travels around Europe with orchestras. Or so he claims. German intelligence service the BND and America’s CIA bring her in for questioning, wrongly thinking she’s protecting him. Soon she begins to learn more about Stefan, whom she had met in the Netherlands a few years ago. She realizes he’s a “gregarious musician with easy charm who collected friends like a beachcomber collects shells, keeping a few, discarding most.” Police find his wallet in a canal and his prized zither in nearby bushes but not his body. Has he been murdered? What’s going on? And why does the BND care? If Stefan is alive, he’s in deep trouble, because he’s believed to be working for the Stasi. She’s told “the dead have a way of showing up. It is only the living who hide.” And she’s quite believable when she wonders, “Can you grieve for someone who betrayed you?” Smart and observant, she notes that the reaction by one of her interrogators is “as false as his toupee. Obvious, uncalled for, and easily put on.” Lurking behind the scenes is the Matchmaker, who specializes in finding women—“American. Divorced. Unhappy,” and possibly having access to Western secrets—who will fall for one of his Romeos. Anne is the perfect fit. “The matchmaker turned love into tradecraft,” a CIA agent tells her. But espionage is an amoral business where duty trumps decency, and “deploring the morality of spies is like deploring violence in boxers.” It’s a sentiment John le Carré would have endorsed, but Anne may have the final word.
Intrigue, murder, and vengeance make for a darkly enjoyable read.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64313-865-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pegasus Crime
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
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