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Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... McMinnville Public Library | Lynds, G. | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Author Notes
Gayle Lynds is an award-winning American author. She is known for writing spy fiction or spy thrillers. She has co-authored three novels with Robert Ludlum. Her books are published in over 20 countries.
Lynds was born in Nebraska, but raised in Iowa. She graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in Journalism, and now lives in California where she is a full-time novelist.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The publisher's claim that Lynds will be the ``first bestselling female author of international suspense'' is hollow-and a bit surprising, given that at least one bestselling female author of international suspense, Linda Davies (whose Wilderness of Mirrors is reviewed below), is a fellow Doubleday writer. But Lynds does an admirable job in her debut novel of aping some of the top male international suspense writers of our era, especially early Ludlum, as she tosses into a swiftly moving narrative stream a vast and dangerous conspiracy, an array of improbable coincidences, several rogue government agents, a legendary international assassin (the ``Carnivore'') and a nearly friendless innocent caught in the middle of it all. Amnesiac Liz Scarsborough awakens to a house and husband she can't remember, to be told that she's an ex-CIA agent who has been living in hiding from the Carnivore. Liz believes that story for only a little longer than readers will, and she soon finds herself on the run from a gallery of threatening figures, heading for Paris in the company of a very neatly introduced fellow agent and incipient love interest. The resourceful heroine is captured but escapes, is recaptured but escapes again, in a dizzying sequence of action scenes that eventually involves a doppelgänger, mind-bending drugs and brainwashing. Thriller fans may not find plausibility in Lynds's first, but they certainly will find the sort of teeth-grinding suspense that they crave. Major ad/promo; author tour. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
An overlong, tiresome debut from erstwhile think-tank editor Lynds. Here, high-ranking CIA renegades are engaged in a sinister scheme to destabilize the EU and make themselves a considerable fortune in the aftermath of its collapse. At the start, though, Sarah Walker is less concerned with conspiracy than with who she is. One fine day, the pop journalist comes to in a Santa Barbara condo with a new face but no recall of her identity. Assured by government men that she's really Liz Sansborough, an intelligence agent who had a nasty fall, Sarah eventually realizes that her putative ID is false. Escaping from the remote complex where she's been sent by CIA gun Hughes Bremner for retraining, Sarah, with considerable aid from scapegrace agent Asher Flores, makes her way to Denver. After a deadly shootout with gunsels dispatched by Bremner (who needs the new, improved Sarah as bait to trap the Carnivore, the world's number-one contract assassin), the outlaw pair heads for Europe to sort out the Liz/Sarah muddle. In Paris, they learn that Sarah (whose memory returns once she quits taking CIA-prescribed pharmaceuticals) was brainwashed to facilitate her use as a pawn in the two-track game being played by Bremner. The perfidious spy (who's been bending the minds of the French cabinet as well) plans not only to eliminate the Carnivore but also to trigger a sharp decline in the value of the franc to enrich himself and his loyal accomplices. Resilient Sarah and Asher, now lovers, uncover the nefarious plot just in the nick (with grudging assistance from a gang of over-the-hill operatives). Meanwhile, sound-bite Sarah has a surfeit of opportunities to comment on the action (``Europe's got enough problems without economic anarchy, darling'') and other weighty matters. A tedious would-be thriller that quickly shows itself to be a sheep in wolf's clothing. (Author tour)
Library Journal Review
With its appealing heroine, this novel, written by an author who dares to tread in the predominately male bastion of CIA suspense novels, should cause a splash. A woman wakes up with no memory and is told that she is Liz Sansborough, a CIA agent. She comes to realize that she is really Liz's cousin, Sarah, and that the CIA has altered her body and mind in order to use her in an elaborate plot that will benefit a multinational company owned sub rosa by the CIA's chief operations officer. Sarah knows too much to be allowed to live and too little to know whom to trust, and spends most of the novel on the run with another agent. There's a lot of blood and guts here, but also an interesting story about how a woman who preferred to be on the sidelines of life becomes a passionate, committed actor in this drama. The author has pseudonymously published several YA novels. Recommended for most public libraries.-Marylaine Block, St. Ambrose Univ. Lib., Davenport, Ia. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.