A solid historical detective story with a tenacious detective, unanticipated twists and an ample supply of suspects.
A search for a wayward daughter in 1927 Paris leads to an investigation into a series of murders in Mears’ (Chasing Dietrich, 2011) latest mystery featuring Pinkerton detective Michael Temple.
Temple has an assignment in Paris that seems like a walk in the park: deliver a father’s letter and bring Anne Johnson home to Ohio. The detective has trouble finding her, but he meets plenty of other people along the way. The novel has a slow, deliberate build, with Temple leisurely hunting in Parisian cafes and having a romance in Luxembourg with Anne’s friend and British doppelganger, Jane. But what appears to be a tour of Europe escalates into a powerhouse whodunit on a grand scale. Temple is framed for murder, roughed up and tossed in jail repeatedly; as soon as he seems cleared of one crime, another body is found. Temple searches for the truth to clear his name in a time of communists, cons and killers. The story’s historical backdrop is richly textured: Temple is a veteran who’d only previously been to Paris during the war; there’s a strong Russian communist presence in the city; and Ernest Hemingway’s missing papers and a letter by Lenin become central to the plot. (The detective even questions Hemingway’s ex-wife, Hadley, who has to explain a Freud reference to him.) The fine-tuned dialogue is a particular highlight, from a rotund writer’s hilarious speech, interspersed with wheezing and throat clearing, to Temple’s comment that he returned home after a night of drinking “early by Paris standards, and drunk by anyone’s standards.” But the book’s most engaging quality is Temple’s adamant refusal to quit; when the police believe they’ve found the solution, all the detective sees are loose ends—which he attacks fervently. In scenes that bookend the novel, an 89-year-old Temple travels to Paris, still wanting answers to questions that are more than half a century old.
A solid historical detective story with a tenacious detective, unanticipated twists and an ample supply of suspects.Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2012
ISBN: 978-1479290789
Page Count: 350
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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