BOOKLIFE.COM 105MYSTERY/THRILLER
Ivory Tower
Grant Matthew Jenkins | Atmosphere
386 pages, trade paper, $20.99, ISBN 978-1-
64669-325-2
Jenkins’s enjoyable debut
follows a film professor as she
uncovers a sex scandal within a
Southern university’s football
program. Margolis Santos (“It’s
pronounced Margo-lee,” she tells
Ford, the naive community college
student she’s sleeping with)
teaches television and film at
Athens University, where her estranged husband, Frank
Sinoro, is the head football coach. When Stephanie, a Delta
Delta Theta sorority member, is gang-raped by football players,
Theta sister Emma begs Margolis to collaborate with her on a
film about how the Thetas were paid to have sex with football
recruits. At first Margolis refuses to rock the boat, but after she
is fired over her relationship with Ford and her marriage ends,
she has little to lose. As she and Emma work on the film, they
discover that the corruption at Athens is linked to the highest
levels of the university administration, and those seeking to
stop Margolis’s investigation won’t hesitate to threaten her.
The author expertly develops Margolis’s character and
shows her evolution from a self-absorbed snob into a sympa-
thetic crusader for traumatized young women. Readers will
appreciate Jenkins’s insightful view of the feelings experienced
by the women in the sorority house as they come to terms with
their reasons for accepting payment for sex (including unrea-
sonably high tuition and sorority fees) and realize they have
been victimized. The chilling rape scene is not overly explicit,
but it clearly reveals the bru-
tality of the assault and its
devastating effects.
Jenkins frames scenes with
film terms such as “fade in”
and “we open on,” a gimmick
that detracts from the flow of
the story. Nuanced character-
izations do much more to keep
the reader hooked, including
Emma’s conflicting feelings
about her sexuality, Margolis’s
determination to keep her teen
daughter safe, and assistant
coach Eggy chasing her ambi-
tion even when it comes at the
expense of her morals. This is
an engrossing, evenly paced
drama about how a woman
lost in her own world discovers
a real sense of purpose in
helping other women.MYSTERY/THRILLER
Saving Calypso
D.Z. Church | Bodie Blue
324 pages, trade paper, $12.50, ISBN978-0-
9983297-6-5
Church’s twisty thriller is driven
by greed and power. Teen heiress
Calypso Swale was about to join
the U.S. equestrian team in the
Olympics when a car crash
involving drunken Grieg Wash-
burn, heir to the Washburn
Exploration (WashEx) empire,
killed her parents. At the time,
Larch Swale, Calypso’s father, was COO of WashEx. Her
father’s last word to her was “Run,” and Calypso obligingly
disappeared with a chunk of his money and a precious patent
for a new kind of engine. Five years later, Grieg’s father is dead
and it looks like someone’s trying to kill Grieg too. WashEx’s
board is offering a reward for Calypso’s return, and no one
wants her found more than Grieg.
This well-constructed thriller provides plenty of action as
well as a glimpse into the cutthroat world of intellectual prop-
erty and mineral rights profiteering, where patents are a
highly lucrative commodity and companies make millions
from exploiting deposits of rare substances. WashEx made
its money in oil; as Grieg tries to turn it in a new direction, the
board pushes for an IPO. Blackmail and murder are also at the
forefront, thanks to a bounty of colorful characters whose
needs, jealousies, and ambitions drive the solid story.
The protagonists are
unusual and compelling. After
slipping off the grid, Calypso is
forced to abandon her privi-
leged lifestyle and live off the
land, raising chickens, making
her own bread, and even
drying seeds in order to
survive. Grieg, a “charming,
monied, swaggering, offen-
sive, risk-taking, impulsive,
murdering bully” but also a
“future-facing genius,” is
determined to sober up and
prove to everyone that he’s
more than capable of stepping
into his father’s shoes. Their
mutual need to reinvent them-
selves in order to survive will
resonate with readers as the
double-crosses and questions
pile up. This is a satisfying
look at the devastation
wrought by selfishness.
Suspense fans with
an interest in cur-
rent events will thrill
to this riveting,
insightful deep dive
into corruption at
an elite university.Production grades
Cover: B
Design & typography: B
Illustrations: –
Editing: B
Marketing copy: C
Production grades
Cover: A
Design & typography: B
Illustrations: –
Editing: B
Marketing copy: –This well-constructed
thriller driven by
old-fashioned vices
and modern
concerns about
resource use is sure
to appeal to fans of
the genre.
PAID REVIEWSGreat for fans of
James Patterson’s
The 6th Target, David
Baldacci’s A Minute to
Midnight.Great for fans of
Jodi Picoult, Chris
Bohjalian.