THE SECRET SPEECH by Tom Rob Smith

Leo Stepanovich Demidov, a loyal member of the state security commission in the Stalinist Soviet Union of the nineteen-fifties, was introduced as a conflicted crime investigator in Tom Rob Smith’s first novel, CHILD 44. In that enormously entertaining thriller, Smith provided the backdrop of the authoritarian state that brooks no dissent, where security apparatchiks like Leo Demidov must bend their own judgement regarding others’ innocence and guilt, and must become ruthless instruments of its repression. In The Secret Speech, Smith’s second novel, it is 1956. Not only has Stalin been dead for three years, but his successor Khrushchev has just given his famous speech of February 1956.

May 21, 2009  Tags: , , ,   Posted in: Fiction based on Real Event, KGB, Russia, Thriller  One Comment

STONE’S FALL by Iain Pears (2)

Iain Pears’ Stone’s Fall: A Novel traces back the lives of arms mogul John William Stone and his beautiful wife Elizabeth (aka Lord and Lady Ravenscliff), as well as others around them. The densely detailed novel opens in Paris in March of 1953 as a journalist attends a funeral and is given a package. This man, Matthew Braddock, then launches into his recollections of the momentous events he experienced in London in 1909 when, after the sudden death of John Stone, he was commissioned by Lady Ravenscliff to find a long-lost child who was bequeathed a sum in her husband’s will.

May 18, 2009  Tags: , , , , ,   Posted in: Espionage, Facing History, France, Historical Perspective, Mystery/Suspense, United Kingdom, Victorian period  No Comments

EMPIRE OF HUMILIATION by James Jens Brusseau

As a Latin American woman I read Empire of Humiliation hoping for a novel that I could relate to, and I wasn’t disappointed. I loved the descriptions of Mexico DF which made me feel like I was back there again. I mean the description of dinner plates at outdoor restaurants getting so coated by the oily air pollution that you can write on them with your finger, that’s exactly how terrible it is. So for anyone who wants a look at nitty-gritty Mexico, at least the cities, this fulfills. Maybe it’s one of those things where because the author is a foreigner living in Mexico, he actually sees and feels some parts better than we do who have lived there since we were young.

May 14, 2009  Tags: ,   Posted in: Debut Novel, International Intrigue, Latino Fiction, Mexico, Movie Material  No Comments

SAVE THE WHALES PLEASE by Konrad Karl Gatien & Sreescanda

Jan Everett is First Lady of the United States. She is also a fiercely dedicated Save the Whales activist. But she doesn’t safely limit herself to office fundraising and the rubber chicken speech circuit. She brings the same total commitment to testifying before the International Whaling Commission on behalf of a total ban on whale hunts as she does to personally sailing with and even leading crews that confront, harry, and seek to sink the pelagic whaling fleets…

May 8, 2009  Tags: , ,   Posted in: Debut Novel, International Intrigue, Movie Material, Thriller  No Comments

THERAPY by Sebastian Fitzek

In Sebastian Fitzek’s Therapy, forty-seven year old Dr. Viktor Larenz is “an eminent psychiatrist with a successful clinic in central Berlin” and “is the author of numerous books and was once a regular guest on radio and TV.” He has a wife, Isabell, and an eleven-year old daughter, Josy, whom he adores. Sadly, Larenz experiences a mental breakdown and is admitted to a facility for treatment. What precipitated his emotional collapse?

May 3, 2009  Tags: , , , ,   Posted in: Debut Novel, Germany, Mystery/Suspense, Translated  No Comments

KILLING CASTRO by Lawrence Block

This breathtaking thriller, originally published the year before the Cuban Missile Crisis under a pen name Lawrence Block never used before or since, is the rarest of Block’s books—and still a work of chilling relevance all these years later, with Castro and Cuba once again commanding headlines.

April 30, 2009  Tags: , , , ,   Posted in: Assassin, Award Winning Author, Cuba, Noir  No Comments