A crisply written, well-researched, and thoroughly entertaining romance/thriller/mystery.
In this crime-fiction sequel, legendary criminals Bonnie and Clyde go undercover to prevent a landmark dam from being blown up before it’s completed.
In their previous novel in this series, Hays and McFall (Bonnie and Clyde: Resurrection Road, 2017, etc.) presented an alternative-history scenario: What if the U.S government faked the outlaws’ 1934 deaths and recruited the duo as uniquely talented operatives? Now their handler, Sal, has a new assignment for them. Two murders, and further evidence, suggest that someone is trying to sabotage what will become the Hoover Dam (still called the “Boulder Dam” in 1935). Likely suspects include union members, anarchists, or mobsters, for different reasons, but whoever’s responsible, Sal says, “the dam has to hold.” Assuming the aliases of Brenda and Clarence Prentiss, Bonnie and Clyde go undercover and get jobs—she as a secretary in the dam’s hiring office and he as a water-truck driver. Nothing about this task is harder for them than working for a living; in a running joke, Clyde destroys his alarm clock every morning by throwing it across the room. Hot on the trail of the culprits (and hot for each other), the two dodge lawmen, operatives from Murder Inc., and other dangers. Just as importantly, their consciences grow a few sizes, too. As in Resurrection Road, Hays and McFall evoke time and place well, as in their descriptions of the dam’s brand-new yet scruffy company town: “nearly identical cottages lined up like a battalion of weary desert soldiers, each standing at shabby attention over a tiny front yard of gravel and a few cactus plants.” Though set in the past, the story’s politics are fresh and timely; Jimmy Hall, a union organizer, notes that “We got some things to work through still, like making sure we’re inclusive of all folks and not just white folks, and not just men.” The word “inclusive” feels a bit too modern, but the sentiments are evergreen. Readers will find Bonnie and Clyde to be great company, and the novel’s framing story (the widowed Bonnie’s 1984 recollections) gives their relationship an extra layer of poignancy.
A crisply written, well-researched, and thoroughly entertaining romance/thriller/mystery.Pub Date: March 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9974113-6-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Pumpjack Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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