BookLife Prize - The Morning Line

2018 Semi Finalist, Mystery/ Thriller Category

Plot/Idea: 10 out of 10 ** Originality: 10 out of 10 ** Prose: 9 out of 10 ** Character/Execution: 10 out of 10 ** Overall: 9.75 out of 10

Plot: The plot of this book is tight and well constructed. The pacing is fast and the storyline is compelling and interesting.

Prose: The prose is one of this book’s great strengths. The writing is smooth and clear. There is enough detail to paint vivid scenes, while the pacing is spot-on.

Originality: Although this book touches on familiar topics, it feels fresh and original. And, the story will resonate with readers because of the current threat of terrorism.

Character Development: The characters in this novel are vividly drawn. They are developed in such a way that readers will cheer for them, especially Aidan. The dialogue is near perfect. 

Publishers Weekly - The Morning Line

Kenny’s intriguing, occasionally moving thriller opens in 1998 New York City, with American journalist Bill Upton receiving the Metropolitan Peace Council’s Peace Medal for his “brilliant, persuasive writings” that have led Northern Ireland to the verge of genuine peace. In his acceptance speech, Upton shares the story about how “courage and sacrifice, when mixed with a bit of sleight of hand, can accomplish what most think impossible.” Flash back to 1980s Northern Ireland: a British sniper misses IRA leader Michael O’Shaughnessy and instead kills O’Shaughnessy’s son, Timmy, in the five-year-old’s bedroom. The bullet travels through a stuffed kangaroo, a Christmas present from the boy’s Australian uncle, Aidan McGuire, before exploding in Timmy’s “little heart.” Devastated by Timmy’s death, Aidan, a trainer for a record-breaking race horse, has an opportunity years later to help the IRA cause. His unique access to the animal gives him the idea for a scheme that can vastly increase the movement’s coffers. Readers will keep turning the pages to see how Aidan’s plan will connect with Upton’s speech.  

Kirkus Review- The Morning Line

Kenny details an Irish Republican Army plot set against the backdrop of the Travers Stakes in this crime thriller.

On a cold night in Derry, a British sniper lies in wait to end the life of Michael O’Shaugnessy, an IRA operative responsible for a recent deadly bombing attack in London. When the bullet meant for Michael kills his young son instead, the tragedy rocks his extended family. The boy’s aunt and uncle adopt distinctly different methods of dealing with their grief. Annie McGuire decides to join the IRA in the violent fight to end British rule in Northern Ireland. Her brother, Aidan, is a gentler man—a well-regarded trainer of thoroughbreds who believes that more violence won’t set the country right. As Annie sinks into the covert world of bombs and threats, Aidan trains Irish Eagle, a promising racehorse who takes the European circuit by storm. When the horse has the opportunity to run at the Travers Stakes in Saratoga Springs, Aidan finally sees an opportunity to settle old scores. “There is, quite simply, no way the colt can lose the Travers Stakes,” he explains to Annie. “That is, unless I decide the horse has an off day.” In a complex scheme involving a network of gangsters, jockeys, terrorists, and arms dealers, Aidan may do more than lose a race: he might just end a war. The plot moves forward at near breakneck speed—almost too fast, sometimes, at the expense of emotional investment—but Kenny is able to do a lot with a quick scene and a few lines of stylish dialogue. The highly fraught context of the Troubles does much to bolster what is ultimately a rather ridiculous premise, and memorable characters coupled with an ever complicating plot aid in the suspension of the reader’s disbelief. Is it a fantasy? Certainly. Yet there’s something that rings true (and inherently Irish) about placing so much emphasis on a horse race rather than on the literal Troubles at hand.

An efficient, if unlikely, thriller that keeps the reader engaged until the finish line.

Kirkus Review- The Docent

A judge, an eager young law clerk, and a museum docent find themselves caught up in one of the most notorious art heists in history in this legal thriller.

In the early morning hours of March 18, 1990, thieves broke into Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and made off with more than a dozen priceless works, including paintings by Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Degas, then promptly vanished. Kenny (The Morning Line, 2014) takes that infamous unsolved crime as inspiration for his second novel. Most of the action takes place more than a decade after the theft, in courtrooms and law offices around Boston. Judge Zelia Valdes is presiding over an ugly brawl between opposing sides of the powerful Theopoulis family. When the ruling doesn’t go the way the patriarch, Cosmo, hoped (he stands to lose nearly $1 billion because of the judge’s decision), his attorney, the talented, ambitious, and morally flexible Roger Metcalf, vows to make things right (“In every war the winner will lose a few battles. It’s the big picture that counts”). That means taking down Valdes, her naïve clerk Tony Cipriano, and anyone else who stands in the way. And when Metcalf’s sketchy associates start digging into Valdes’ past, they discover that the attractive widow has a strange connection to the unsolved art heist. Art buffs and thriller fans should want to plunge into this ripped-from-the-headlines effort. The author, himself a practicing lawyer, clearly knows his way around a courtroom, though he occasionally slips into legalese that might elicit yawns from the average reader. His imaginative theory about what really happened to the missing Gardner paintings is implausible and the business of uncovering the crime somewhat convoluted. A few characters—Metcalf’s wife, Jennifer, and Cosmo’s daughter Angie—are introduced early on and then unceremoniously dropped. Yet when the main players are this engaging (or in the case of Metcalf, loathsome) and the plot this zippy, these are minor quibbles. A few musings on the power of art to heal and soothe the soul are thrown in for good measure, though a bit more detail about the missing paintings that drive so much of the action would have been welcome. 

A sharp and suspenseful novel about a Boston museum theft. 

Publishers Weekly- Bermuda Blood

Vietnam War veteran Waldo LaGrande, the hero of this suspenseful thriller set in the mid 1990s from Kenny (The Morning Line), has conquered the twin demons of a traumatic childhood and alcoholism to become the first African-American to be elected to the House of Representatives by Massachusetts voters. His time in office coincides with a federal inquiry into possible campaign finance illegalities connected with an investment house located in Bermuda. The firm’s clients include an ambitious Texas congressman, Horace Dowd, who’s angling to unseat his state’s longtime incumbent senator, Lloyd Baylor. While IRS field agent Gregory Jollymore puts the pieces together, Waldo attends a conference in Switzerland, where he falls off the wagon and is unfaithful to his wife. Back in Washington, Waldo takes charge of looking into what has become a money laundering case, though not before a prominent politician and his spouse are murdered. The stakes rise when a rival Massachusetts pol threatens to expose Waldo’s one-night stand if he decides to pursue justice in the case. Fans of Brad Meltzer will be pleased.  

Kirkus Review- Bermuda Blood 

Bodies pile up as corrupt politicians try to protect a money laundering operation in Kenny’s (The Docent, 2016) political thriller. Waldo LaGrande is the first African-American ever elected to the House of Representatives from the state of Massachusetts. As he starts to find his way around Washington, D.C., in the mid-1990s, he runs into a wide-ranging international financial conspiracy linked to several of his colleagues. Soon the novel’s omniscient third-person narration brings readers into every aspect of the money laundering business, including the couriers carting stacks of bills in New York City and Hamilton Harbour, Bermuda; the elites benefiting from the arrangement; and the disgruntled financial clerk who becomes a whistleblower in a fit of pique. Waldo, a decorated U.S. Marine who relocated from the Jim Crow South to Massachusetts at the end of his service, serves as the book’s moral core, but he has flaws, as well, never coming off as unbelievably noble. As he begins to untangle the corruption among his colleagues, federal investigators uncover the misconduct from other angles, setting in motion a plot that eventually brings all the major characters together on Bermuda during a hurricane—but not before more than a few participants are tortured and killed. Kenny has a strong sense of plot and keeps the complex threads of the novel moving toward a reasonable conclusion. The sprawling cast of characters is full of well-defined personalities, and the author gives readers detailed portraits of even minor figures. The book’s prose, however, is less successful due to awkward metaphors (“Like a gazelle shocked by the appearance of a cheetah, Waldo cut to his left, onto Main Street, and sprinted down the edge of the pavement”) and a Dan Brown–like tendency to replace pronouns with excessive character descriptions (“Good Lord in heaven above, the untidy fat man in the soiled white suit and Giants baseball cap complained to his personal deity”). An often engaging, if flawed, novel about a man of integrity exposing personal and political corruption.