I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy from the Publisher. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Water Memory
by Daniel Pyne
Series: Aubrey Sentro #1
Series Rating:
Published by Thomas & Mercer on February 1, 2021
Genres: Spies and Espionage Thriller
Pages: 366
Format: Paperback
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A fast-paced, page-turning thriller that contemplates the consequences of motherhood, memory, and crime as a commodity.
Black ops specialist Aubrey Sentro may be one concussion away from death. But when pirates seize the cargo ship she’s on, she must decide whether to risk her life to save her fellow passengers.
Sentro’s training takes over, and she’s able to elude her captors, leaving bodies in her wake. But her problems are just getting started. Her memory lapses are getting more frequent, symptoms of serial-concussion syndrome.
As she plays a deadly game of cat and mouse with the pirates, she pushes herself to survive by focusing on thoughts of her children. She’s never told them what she really does for a living, and now she might not get the chance.
While her memories make her vulnerable, motherhood makes her dangerous.
Water Memory by Daniel Pyne is a fast-paced, unforgettable, crazy ride that left me a bit melancholy.
Can Aubrey save the crew, passengers, and herself before it’s too late?
Aubrey Sentro
Aubrey is a mother, widow, and spy. But none of these things truly describe her. Aubrey is good at her job, maybe not as good at being a mother or wife, but she does the best that she can. Her children disagree with that, but they don’t know everything Aubrey has gone through.
Aubrey’s memory is failing, and she is losing bits of time. However, her instincts are still there. She seems to function on autopilot at times, her body takes over, and her brain knows what needs to be done even if it can’t remember why?
I was drawn to Aubrey. She is such an unexpected heroine. I truly think that people have underestimated her most of her life. She sees a dark side that most people don’t, yet she is always trying to make it better.
The action in the story is wonderful. However, I really loved that the consequences of the actions were real. People really got hurt, they died, or they will live with scars like Zoala. The twin “pirates” were insane, and yet people followed them. I loved the way that Caster would call Aubrey names like Wonder Woman or She-Wolf. Showing respect even though he wants her dead. Aubrey’s children learned about their mom the hard way. And at the end, Fontaine got her due.
Four Stars
I highly recommend this book to all you thriller readers out there. My rating is four stars. Because it is almost too realistic, the whole memory loss for Aubrey was terrifying, more so than everything else that was happening, and yet I would reread it.
Thank you for dropping by! I hope you enjoyed this review of Water Memory by Daniel Pyne.
Until the next time,
About Daniel Pyne
Quite a while ago, now, at one of those television critics thingies in Pasadena, where in my emergency role as co-show runner of the Alcatraz I was to be trotted out to face the press and promote the show, my reputation preceded me. Executives at Fox and Warner Bros. stayed in continuous contact to ensure I’d attend (earlier in my television career I would send my mentor and partner Bill Sackheim to the pressers, insisting I was too busy writing the next episode to take time out to talk about the show. Movie junkets are harder to escape, but I have flown below the radar for most of my so called career (and have no plans to fly higher). Happily, the critics had no interest in me. Their focus was on J.J. Abrams, whose production company had developed the series — deservedly an industry superstar and he seems to enjoy it. I just don’t, sorry.
But in the age of influencers, social networks and the culture of personality, an aversion to self promotion can be professional suicide.
So here we are.
My history, such as it is, in a nutshell: a handful of movie credits, an assortment of uncredited script doctoring; television shows, staff and showrunner (a few that were hits, many that didn’t last) a proud collection of pilots that didn’t sell, and just enough completely unproduced original film and t.v. work to push me, in the mid aughts, to finish Twentynine Palms, the novel I had intended to write when I stumbled out of Stanford with a degree in economics and more creative writing coursework, under the tutalege of Chuck Kinder, than was probably healthy. Well. Not exactly the novel I intended to write back then. That one is still in a box, unfinished. UCLA film school sent me to an alternate universe. Staffing on Matt Houston was my first paying job. Pacific Heights was my first produced film. My feature directorial debut was the largely unseen Where’s Marlowe? You can look the rest up on IMDB, or Google me.
They’re fairly ancient credits, but I’m proud of them. I didn’t win any Oscars or Emmys and much of my work is not on the critical radar except in tepid footnotes or anecdotal passing reference in retrospectives on the many fine and famous directors with whom I’ve had the good fortune to work. For many years I taught a graduate seminar in screenwriting at UCLA. I got to be a writing fellow at the Sundance Institute. I’ve been a journalist, a copywriter, a cartoonist, a silk screener, a pretty good husband and dad, and the proud owner of five rescue dogs and a bunch of cats.
And now? Water Memory my next book, will be coming out in February of 2021, from Thomas & Mercer, and I’m working on a follow-up.
You can find some of my short fiction at the webzine hotvalleywriters.com. I was recently showrunner (and co-showrunner with the talented Eric Overmyer) for Michael Connelly’s Amazon series Bosch. My last movie script was an adaptation of Backstabbing For Beginners for Danish filmmaker Per Fly. I continue to develop projects for film and for television. It’s been a good career, and a long career, that happily circled back to the prose fiction I’ve wanted to write when I started, and probably took me this long to learn how to do properly. In my perfect world I would remain invisible, letting the work speak for itself. In this world, I thank you for your indulgence, and interest in my writing. Now go read.
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