A promisingly complex detective story too often sidelined by editorializing.
In DeSain’s (Prometheus Ignored, 2012) latest novel, a corrupt sheriff facing re-election tracks a serial killer in a rural California county where mysterious forces hold sway.
Sheriff Gus has never had to do much to hold his place as the county’s top law enforcement officer. The local party bosses have always told him whom to investigate and when to turn a blind eye, and his compliance has earned him a career’s worth of unopposed elections. But times have changed: The old bosses are all dead or bankrupt, and a recent influx of left-leaning refugees from Los Angeles has given rise to Gus’ first-ever political opponent—a gym-toned, camera-ready young family man named Lance Daniels. Gus’ defeat seems certain until a beautiful young woman is found dead in a local cattle pasture, providing the aging sheriff with a rare chance to prove his mettle through some good old-fashioned police work. But when a second body turns up, Gus must decide to either follow the thread of truth through a dangerous maze of corrupt interests or settle for the kind of easy answers the local press can spin into election-night victory. DeSain does know a thing or two about crime writing, although the prose sometimes lacks literary style. He sets Gus’ odyssey in a convincingly multilayered social milieu populated by a slew of likely suspects, including a dissolute Hollywood producer, a drug cartel kingpin and a shadowy Julian Assange–inspired Internet activist obsessed with ushering in an age of “total information awareness.” Unfortunately, the real villain here is the novel’s penchant for broad social satire, which falls flat under a too-heavy hand and drags the novel down every time it starts picking up speed. The reflexive lampooning of the Internet age robs the novel’s climax of any punch it might have had. At its best, however, the novel succeeds as a charmingly suspenseful study of a corrupt cop who surprises himself by turning out to be pretty good at his job.
A promisingly complex detective story too often sidelined by editorializing.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2013
ISBN: 978-0615824895
Page Count: 174
Publisher: John D.\DeSain
Review Posted Online: Jan. 6, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
