An absorbing read for lovers of great writing, the philosophically minded and appreciators of slick dramas.
Gangsters, former beauty queens, bombshell blondes, thugs, thieves, assassins and snitches: they’re all in day’s work for Mike Miller.
In Perry's (Cat Flight from Birdland, 2011, etc.) latest novel, Mike Miller makes decisions on a daily basis that keep him in hot water. He’s a smart guy who’s sometimes too cynical and sarcastic for his own good, but it's not his fault that he fell in to his line of work. Half a lifetime ago, he just was another Joe Schmoe with a degree in philosophy he never wanted and wasting away at a dead-end job. Then he encountered some famous mobsters and got caught up in the middle of a murder case. However, he managed to keep his mouth shut to the cops. Ever since then, he has made a lucrative career out of being a mouthpiece for anyone who will pay top dollar. Acting as the string between two tin cans isn’t as easy as it sounds; sometimes the intended recipient of the message is dead. To cope with his oddball clients, Miller nicknames them after philosophers he admires like Confucius, Schopenhauer, Descartes, Siddhartha and Hobbes. Compounding matters is his gorgeous wife, a television news reporter named Tuesday. Miller loves her deeply and lusts for her insatiably, but they clash constantly. This gives the story the feeling of a familiar film noir but is not in the least clichéd. Miller is an anti-hero who readers will find themselves rooting for. Perry is painstaking with his word play and attention to detail given not only to Miller, but every character and setting. The the plot feels wonderfully precise, and this extends from Perry's clever nom-de-plume to the use of the infinity symbol on every page.
An absorbing read for lovers of great writing, the philosophically minded and appreciators of slick dramas.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-1468002324
Page Count: 257
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
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SEEN & HEARD
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