Matteson’s grisly thriller gives the attorney-client relationship a bad name.
Bradley “Hound Dog” Hunt, once a prosperous corporate lawyer, began representing “the most guilty and despicable clients” after his son was killed by a drunk driver in a hit-and-run. Hunt’s clients always walk free, and, soon after they do, Hunt tracks them down and kills them. Revealing Hunt’s secret doesn’t ruin any surprises for the reader because the central question posed by Matteson’s novel is not who murdered Hunt’s clients. It’s not even whether Hunt will be discovered. Rather, the novel probes what the FBI agents on Hunt’s tail will do when they inevitably connect the dots in his crimes, and whether the lonely librarian who becomes besotted with Hunt will remain interested once she discovers the violent truth. The novel opens with Hunt’s gruesome killing of a child pornographer and murderer. Before killing his client, Hunt helped him strike a deal with the federal government that placed him in the witness protection program. We then meet Frank Turbine and Nelson Lyman, the FBI agents assigned to the murder. Matteson alternates between Hunt’s lonely quest to avenge his son’s death, the agents’ investigation and the attractive librarian’s interest in Hunt, which is sparked when her son testifies as a witness during one of Hunt’s trials. The author successfully delivers suspense and surprises, and the novel moves back and forth between California and Pennsylvania at a breakneck pace. Unfortunately, the characters are not as well crafted as the plot. Matteson attempts to create unique characters, such as small-town sheriff Hannibal Johnson and Cherlene, Hunt’s loyal secretary, but in his efforts to make his characters vivid, he indulges a tendency to overwrite. For example, when Turbine drives Lyman down a country road, Matteson does not just write that Lyman “felt more like Tonto than he cared to admit and looked glumly out the window,” he adds that Lyman was “disturbed and confused, sharing only a quiet stoicism with his fictional Indian counterpart.” Similarly, it’s not enough for Lyman to habitually twirl a rubber band; Matteson spells out that in doing so, Lyman shows “his true, hyperkinetic nature.” Overwrought prose slows down an otherwise engrossing thriller.
Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2012
ISBN: 978-0615496436
Page Count: 330
Publisher: Croydon
Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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