Review_FICTION
42 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ MARCH 2, 2020
Review_FICTION
spectacular future space weapons systems
are utterly convincing. Tom Clancy fans
won’t want to miss this one. Agent: Robert
Gottlieb, Trident Media Group. (May)The Lion’s Den
Katherine St. John. Grand Central, $28
(368p) ISBN 978-1-5387-3363-9
What should have been an idyllic
vacation for struggling actress Belle Carter,
the narrator of St. John’s propulsive if
occasionally preposterous Machiavellian
debut, mutates into something more akin
to Survivor: St. Tropez. Though Belle’s
former bestie, Summer Sanderson, the
mistress of billionaire John Lyons, has
ostensibly invited Belle to celebrate her
birthday cruising the Riviera aboard
Lyons’s yacht, along with a few other friends
and family, early warning signs suggest
that Lyons may have a hidden agenda, as
do the plutocrats he’s meeting with. These
signs include the young women being
locked into their cabins at night and asked
to surrender their passports as well as
having only limited, monitored internet
access—measures brushed off as necessary
to protect the men’s privacy. Belle may have
her own plans, though the true picture of
the high-stakes cat-and-mouse game
involving her and the ruthless Summer
only becomes visible as the twisty but far-
fetched plot races toward the finish.
Readers prepared to overlook unconvincing
characters as well as several stupefying
turns of events will be satisfied. St. John
dishes up a diverting poolside-ready
page-turner. Agent: Sarah Bedingfield,
Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary. (May)The New Girl
Harriet Walker. Ballantine, $17 trade paper
(304p) ISBN 978-1-9848-1997-0
British author Walker’s searing debut
follows the intertwined lives of three
women. High-powered London fashion
editor Margot Jones is headed for maternity
leave, her pregnancy a few months behind
her best friend Winnie Clough’s. Maggie
Beecher, Margot’s handpicked temporary
successor, proves far more adept at Margot’s
job than either imagined. When one
character suffers a personal tragedy, Margot
finds herself adrift and terrified of the
future, Winnie refuses to see or speak to
her for reasons related to the tragedy, and
Maggie emerges as the darling of theVan Veeteren mysteries), 49-year-old Erik,
the book’s narrator, promises to tell the
reader about “a terrible and tragic event”
that occurred the summer he was 14. In
1962, as Erik’s mother is dying of cancer,
his grieving father sends the boy to the
family’s ramshackle lake cabin with
14-year-old Edmund, a fellow student Erik
hardly knows, and Erik’s older brother, a
reporter who intends to write the Great
Swedish Novel that summer. After a lazy
month of swimming and fantasizing,
handball champion Berra Albertsson is
found dead in a gravel parking spot near
where the boys are staying, his skull caved
in, and his fiancée, Ewa Kaludis, the boys’
substitute teacher and the object of their
dreams, is a suspect. Erik and Edmund
embark on a protracted murder investiga-
tion that leads them into the mysteries of
sex. Nesser sensitively probes the agonies
and ecstasies of adolescence, making this
an exquisite example of Nordic noir’s
ability to reveal the darkest emotional
depths beneath a cloudless summer sky.
Agent: Elisabet Brannstrom, Bonnier Rights.
(June)Eagle Station
Dale Brown. Morrow, $28.99 (432p) ISBN 978-
0-06-284308-1
Set in 2022, this exciting military action
thriller from bestseller Brown finds
American forces still in control of Mars
One, the armed Russian space station that
a space-borne commando raid captured
in 2019’s The Kremlin Strike. Since the
Russians destroyed most of the U.S.
reconnaissance satellites in the previous
book, American ground forces are essen-
tially blind, except for intel supplied by
commandos who have taken over what’s
now called Eagle Station. The loss of a
battle in space with the Americans per-
suades Marshal Mikhail Ivanovich Leonov,
the mastermind behind the creation of Mars
One, and Li Jun, the Chinese president,
that the only way they will ever beat their
long-standing foe is by combining forces
and controlling the newest battlefield,
outer space. The key to success is amassing
the special fuel needed to fuel Russian
fusion reactors, which is only readily
available on the moon. As the Russian and
Chinese forces close in on their goal, it
becomes clear that only the ingenuity of
Americans can save the day. Brown’stratingly obscured. Series fans will want
to take a look, but the uninitiated need
not apply. (Apr.)Of Sea and Seed
(The Kerrigan Chronicles #1)
Annie Daylon. McRAC, $13.95 trade paper
(352p) ISBN 978-0-9866980-4-0
Daylon’s talent is apparent in this
engrossing opening to a projected series
about the travails of a Newfoundland
family. In 1915, matriarch Kathleen
Kerrigan’s family is sustained by cod
fishing in the village of Argentia, but
when her three-month-old baby dies, the
loss signals further devastation ahead.
Kathleen’s depression combined with a
diagnosis of consumption forces the
family to send her to a sanatorium. Her
16-year-old son Kevin deserts the family,
leaving eight-
year-old Clara
alone with her
father, Alphonse,
who has been
emotionally
devastated by
his combat
involvement in
WWI (“War
can leave scars
on a man...
inside scars,” Kevin explains to Clara). As
the narrative shifts between Kevin, Clara,
and Kathleen, the family suffers through
relentless tribulations—death, abuse,
infidelity—but it’s the family secrets that
come to light that might destroy them.
Fisherman jargon and the family’s Irish
ancestry add flavor to the strong imagery
(“When the sea can retreat no farther it
pauses, then plunges forward, from the
bottom... it becomes a murderous
mountain of emerald marble”). Intriguing
characterizations and a surprising level
of suspense make this a page-turner.
(Self-published)Mystery/Thriller
★ The Summer of Kim Novak
Håkan Nesser, trans. from the Swedish by
Saskia Vogel. World, $16.99 trade paper
(224p) ISBN 978-1-64286-019-1
At the start of this moving elegy for
lost innocence from Nesser (the Inspector