Detective fiction that’s packed with genuinely likable characters who join forces in surprising ways.
An inexperienced detective battles evil politicians, corrupt cops, and ruthless gangsters in this light look at the dark side of sunny California.
There’s adventure ahead in Kelly’s (Winged, 2011) detective novel as she introduces the charming Richard Valentine, a novice detective who’s just clueless enough to encourage readers to solve cases along with him. As the novel opens, he’s working small cases in the greater Los Angeles area. He learned the trade as an apprentice to the formidable Dako Farona, an experienced detective involved in dangerous, hush-hush cases. He tosses smaller fish to Valentine, with his receptionist, Laurel Briley, assisting. A few weeks after setting up his own practice, following an initially disastrous bodyguard gig at a Renaissance faire, Valentine lucks out by receiving a cash reward and rents his own office in a two-story building nicknamed the Gingerbread House. He shares it with a motley crew of LA entrepreneurs, including would-be screenwriters; Moonbeam Fink, a masseuse; a music producer; a talent agent; and hapless actor Lloyd, the building’s receptionist. He’s encouraged by Kitty and Bitsy Sutterman, his elderly landladies, who quickly disabuse him of his prejudices about senior citizens with “all the gentle finesse of Darth Vader chopping off Luke Skywalker’s hand.” They make him see that “growing old may be inevitable, but growing up is a choice.” Kelly tosses in Dako’s feisty, beautiful daughter Rexanne, the seventh-richest 20-year-old in Texas, a beautiful woman named Piper Lang, hints about the past from former cop Victor Ramirez, and assorted corrupt local officials and mobsters to keep Valentine’s head spinning. The wonderfully easy first-person voice seems drawn from the golden age of detective stories (“I creaked along behind her, sweating like an armadillo on a grill”).The author plays fair with the mystery elements, weaving clues into the engaging central story via smoothly blended storylines. Murder, greed, and betrayal remain constants throughout, making this trip through the Hollywood Hills an example of first-rate escapist reading.
Detective fiction that’s packed with genuinely likable characters who join forces in surprising ways.Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-692-47797-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Flight Risk Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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