Better as a mystery than a coming-of-age tale but not even fully successful as that
A psychic 17-year-old learns to talk to the living, while an adult detective catches a serial killer in this sequel to Dead Connection (2006).
Murray’s only friends are the dead teenagers who talk to him at the cemetery and Pearl, the cemetery caretaker's daughter, who befriended him when she helped him use his ability to speak with the dead to solve a murder in the previous book. Pearl's father, Janochek, allows Murray to live in a cemetery shed since the boy's unwilling to live with his prostitute mother. But despite the friendship of Pearl and Janochek, Murray is introverted and shy. While Pearl angrily pushes him to further develop his psychic powers, Murray develops an attraction for a dead girl, a cute-as-a-button dancer he'd seen from a distance while she was alive. Meanwhile, Murray's old ally/antagonist, Deputy Gates, seeks clues about a rash of missing homeless people. Along with his fellow officers and a social-worker girlfriend, Deputy Gates does legwork worthy of a police procedural. In interwoven segments of choppy, fragmented prose conveyed in shifting points of view that give all the characters a similarly odd, adult voice, Deputy Gates, Murray, Pearl, and Janochek observe these two scarcely intersecting storylines. The sense of fragmentation is heightened by infodumps about social work, homelessness, domestic violence, and the criminal justice system. The resolution owes more to adult efforts than to Murray's powers.
Better as a mystery than a coming-of-age tale but not even fully successful as that . (Paranormal mystery. 15-18)Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-374-30227-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
Only marginally intriguing.
In a remote part of Utah, in a “temple of excellence,” the best of the best are recruited to nurture their talents.
Redemption Preparatory is a cross between the Vatican and a top-secret research facility: The school is rooted in Christian ideology (but very few students are Christian), Mass is compulsory, cameras capture everything, and “maintenance” workers carry Tasers. When talented poet Emma disappears, three students, distrusting of the school administration, launch their own investigation. Brilliant chemist Neesha believes Emma has run away to avoid taking the heat for the duo’s illegal drug enterprise. Her boyfriend, an athlete called Aiden, naturally wants to find her. Evan, a chess prodigy who relies on patterns and has difficulty processing social signals, believes he knows Emma better than anyone. While the school is an insidious character on its own and the big reveal is slightly psychologically disturbing, Evan’s positioning as a tragic hero with an uncertain fate—which is connected to his stalking of Emma (even before her disappearance)—is far more unsettling. The ’90s setting provides the backdrop for tongue-in-cheek technological references but doesn’t do anything for the plot. Student testimonials and voice-to-text transcripts punctuate the three-way third-person narration that alternates among Neesha, Evan, and Aiden. Emma, Aiden, and Evan are assumed to be white; Neesha is Indian. Students are from all over the world, including Asia and the Middle East.
Only marginally intriguing. (Mystery. 15-18)Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-266203-3
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Bulky, balky, talky.
In an updated quest for the Holy Grail, the narrative pace remains stuck in slo-mo.
But is the Grail, in fact, holy? Turns out that’s a matter of perspective. If you’re a member of that most secret of clandestine societies, the Priory of Sion, you think yes. But if your heart belongs to the Roman Catholic Church, the Grail is more than just unholy, it’s downright subversive and terrifying. At least, so the story goes in this latest of Brown’s exhaustively researched, underimagined treatise-thrillers (Deception Point, 2001, etc.). When Harvard professor of symbology Robert Langdon—in Paris to deliver a lecture—has his sleep interrupted at two a.m., it’s to discover that the police suspect he’s a murderer, the victim none other than Jacques Saumière, esteemed curator of the Louvre. The evidence against Langdon could hardly be sketchier, but the cops feel huge pressure to make an arrest. And besides, they don’t particularly like Americans. Aided by the murdered man’s granddaughter, Langdon flees the flics to trudge the Grail-path along with pretty, persuasive Sophie, who’s driven by her own need to find answers. The game now afoot amounts to a scavenger hunt for the scholarly, clues supplied by the late curator, whose intent was to enlighten Sophie and bedevil her enemies. It’s not all that easy to identify these enemies. Are they emissaries from the Vatican, bent on foiling the Grail-seekers? From Opus Dei, the wayward, deeply conservative Catholic offshoot bent on foiling everybody? Or any one of a number of freelancers bent on a multifaceted array of private agendas? For that matter, what exactly is the Priory of Sion? What does it have to do with Leonardo? With Mary Magdalene? With (gulp) Walt Disney? By the time Sophie and Langdon reach home base, everything—well, at least more than enough—has been revealed.
Bulky, balky, talky.Pub Date: March 18, 2003
ISBN: 0-385-50420-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2003
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