An engaging, slow-burning political mystery set in Manila.
Holm details the convoluted dealings of a Filipino politician in this debut novel.
Manuel Murillo has experienced a setback. “A congressman for nine years, with business interests in coconut oil, provincial bus lines, and property, Murillo was in his late sixties and no longer the strong man he had once been.” He has recently lost a senatorial election that should have been his. What’s more, he’s been contacted by a mysterious priest who seems to know a lot about Murillo’s past dealings. Meeting at a restaurant in Manila, the priest outlines a peculiar crisis at a shipping company in distant Norway, where a businessman has disappeared after transferring $1 million to the Filipino capital. The money is unaccounted for. Murillo knows that the funds—a kickback—had been meant to help him with his campaign. What he doesn’t know is why the priest keeps bringing up a teenage former mistress of Murillo’s from more than 20 years ago: a girl he put on a bus to Santa Rita but who apparently never arrived there. “Every day in every town in this country of ours, the rich and powerful take advantage of the less fortunate,” the enigmatic priest reminds Murillo. “I know only too well.” Holm unfolds his mystery through the meandering, detail-savoring narrative of the priest, while the reader sits, like Murillo, wondering where the tale is headed and what it all means. In the hands of a lesser storyteller, this rambling account might be frustrating, but Holm’s textured prose summons the energy and fatigue of the priest in such a way that it keeps the reader drifting forward with unsuspecting mirth. The true pleasure of the novel is the atmosphere, rendered in a language that evokes Manila’s chaotic fullness while still hinting at its ghosts: “The swell of people and vehicles rolled slowly southward, but the flood was smaller now because the commuters had started to trickle away into the dark landscape.” The intrigue is just serpentine enough to feel realistic, and while the conclusion is less than earth-shattering, the experience is more than satisfactory.
An engaging, slow-burning political mystery set in Manila.Pub Date: Nov. 23, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5188-2714-3
Page Count: 214
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
