March 29, 2010
Two strangers, American David Martinez and Englishman Simon Quinn, become involved in two apparently unconnected strands of what's revealed as one unified conspiracy in Knox's problematic second thriller, which like his first, Genesis
, casts recent human evolution in an unorthodox light. At the urging of his late grandfather, Martinez sets out to learn his family's true history, while Quinn looks into a series of brutal murders involving victims connected to the Basque regions of Spain and France. Both men find answers in the tumultuous history of the Pyrenees and Namibia, answers with implications so terrible that the Catholic Church is willing to conspire with a murderous Basque terrorist to conceal them. Repeated violent confrontations with supposedly deadly assassins somehow never quite result in the protagonists' deaths. That Knox, the pseudonym of British journalist Sean Thomas, supplies a “rational” basis for the Nazi genocide may offend some readers.
May 1, 2010
An unattached London lawyer and company follow a strange map to a dark secret.
After his grandfather died, David Martinez was finally as alone as he'd felt his entire life. He had no other family and knew nothing about his roots. But soon after the funeral, he receives some shocking news: His seemingly poor grandfather has left him $2 million and a strange map, on the condition that he travel to Basque Country to meet with a man named Jose Garovillo. After arriving, his attempts to locate Garovillo in a bar lead to a near-fatal encounter with an ETA terrorist named Miguel, but he is saved at the last minute by Amy Myerson, an attractive teacher who briefly dated Miguel before realizing he was a violent psychopath. Amy, a friend of Garovillo (who happens to be Miguel's father), arranges a meeting, where Garovillo informs David that David's grandfather was a Basque. He advises David to forget about the map, because… But before he can reveal more, Miguel arrives and begins to chase David and Amy all around Basque Country and beyond, as they ignore the old man's advice and follow the map. Meanwhile, Simon Quinn, a London-based freelance journalist, covers a series of murders that seem to have something to do with the Cagots, a long-persecuted and nearly extinct ethnic minority from Basque Country. His investigation puts him in contact with David and Amy, and together, facing danger at every turn, they must uncover a centuries-old and well-protected secret, the exposure of which could really muck things up for racial and ethnic harmony worldwide. In his debut novel, The Genesis Secret (2009), Knox (whose real name is Sean Thomas) crafted a few tensely atmospheric and absorbing opening chapters before a series of transparent advance-the-plot-at-all-costs coincidences irreparably sunk the narrative. The well-done atmospherics appear here (although in shorter patches, and less well-done), but so too do the lame shortcuts. Worse, the characters—especially David—are paper-thin, and the climax features a plot twist that most readers will have seen coming from way, way off.
Weak and unpersuasive.
(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)
May 1, 2010
Knox ("The Genesis Secret"), a would-be Dan Brown, bangs out a jumbled man-on-the-run story. A mysterious map stirs up trouble for American David Martinez, while a British journalist investigates a series of gruesome murders. Basque terrorists, a mysterious woman, Nazi doctors, and radical Catholic conservatives come together in a stew with too many ingredients and not enough flavor. Verdict Buy if you've got the extra bucks, and recommend only to readers with strong stomachs.
Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
April 1, 2010
David Martinez is shocked to discover that his recently deceased grandfather has left him a small fortune. But theres one proviso: David must travel to Spain, to Basque Country, where he is to find a certain man and show him a certain map. Meanwhile, journalist Simon Quinn lucks into the story of a lifetime: someone has tortured and murdered two elderly women whose only connection appears to be a unique physical deformity. His investigation leads him deep into the Basque region. For most of the book, Knox is telling two separate stories, Davids and Simons; this isnt one of those thrillers where two strangers team up to solve a central mystery. Each has his own mystery to solve (Davids involves his own past and the long-ago death of his parents), but the plots are intertwined, and slowly, with hints about an old Nazi concentration camp, medical experiments, and a missing geneticist, the reader sees the pieces come together. An intriguing, well-told story.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)