Plenty of fast-paced action that tries to cover too much ground.
An exposed undercover agent awaits rescue and recalls his past in this ambitious cross between a coming-of-age tale and a period thriller.
Gilliam’s debut novel could be described as three-in-one. It opens with undercover narcotics agent Tim Kelly being discovered by Rodolfo Guzman, his longtime surrogate father and the drug kingpin he has agreed to betray. Kelly suffers through merciless torture and blacks out to recollections of his past—of growing up in the 1950s in Port Isabel, Texas, running off to the mean streets of New Orleans and eventually lying his way into the U.S. Coast Guard, where a heinous friendly-fire incident in Vietnam, along with its subsequent whitewash and Kelly’s dishonorable discharge, forever alters the way he sees his world. Kelly is a throwback to the spirit of Horatio Alger, a young man capable of almost anything through sheer gumption. Everything comes naturally to him, his only weakness being his temper, which makes him not the most original protagonist, but still an endearing one. Similarly, Guzman transforms organically from the friendly benevolent figure to the betrayed, cutthroat mobster, and his constant presence, looking out for Kelly and asking nothing in return, greatly complicates Kelly’s decision to turn informant. Other characters are more simplistic—the thug Rucho never changes from the bully that Kelly bests on the playground, Kelly’s love interest is only there to suffer and drive him forward and the brave men who die in the novel’s eponymous tragedy aren’t fleshed out enough to drive home the loss Kelly feels. Gilliam’s knowledge of the technical aspects of military service is obvious, and though it slows the story’s pace, these details will be appreciated by those who enjoy well-researched nautical jargon. The pacing also suffers from the book’s scope—in telling a story about growing up, the military and infiltrating a drug cartel, Gilliam’s tale never slows down long enough to give its most tragic and important moments their proper emotional weight.
Plenty of fast-paced action that tries to cover too much ground.Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2010
ISBN: 978-1609106218
Page Count: 316
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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
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