An engaging mystery with a late twist and an especially satisfying ending.
In this fifth installment of a series, a journalist and incorrigible amateur sleuth investigates a murder that disrupts a celebration at a peaceful cultural retreat in New York State.
It is the Fourth of July, and the Chautauqua Institution’s 5,000-seat Amphitheater is filled for the annual Independence Day concert. As the orchestra reaches the crescendo of Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture,” the audience pops paper bags on cue from the conductor. Lost in the cacophony is the sound of gunfire. Nobody hears it. Then Mimi Goldman, the sports editor of the Chautauquan Daily, sees EMTs racing to take out a woman on a stretcher. A 36-year-old documentary filmmaker, Maureen Donahue, has been killed. Mimi, who hails from New York City and logged several decades as a reporter and copy editor for the New York Post, plunges headfirst into the investigation. Never mind that she is about to marry her upstate beau, Walt Dellaria, and her schedule is already more than full. Who would have reason to kill Maureen? This, it turns out, is the wrong question, and it sends Mimi off on a tangent. No matter. There are plenty of little backstories to keep things gossipy and intriguing. When the prime suspect, Craig Halladay, a mentally disturbed man from New York City, turns himself in so he can proclaim his innocence, Mimi becomes suspicious that the case is being closed too quickly. Pines (Beside Still Waters, 2017, etc.), a newspaper copy editor and former reporter, produces snappy prose, and her narrative moves along at a healthy speed. On the way, readers are introduced to an assortment of eclectic secondary characters who make up the quirky ensemble of townies and visitors to the Chautauqua Institution, a well-known “summer camp for adults.” As in her previous volumes, the author takes the time to lay out the geography, history, and rich intellectual and artistic tapestry of the gated enclave, which first opened in the late 19th century. She builds her large cast of players with similar care, giving each one a chapter or two in which to star.
An engaging mystery with a late twist and an especially satisfying ending.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-72317-982-2
Page Count: 262
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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