This clever mystery will particularly delight hard-core wordophiles—and send them scrambling for the dictionary.
In Krass’ (Carnegie, 2011, etc.) novel, a National Security Agency assassin finds that things aren’t what they seem after he carries out orders to kill a fellow agent.
This story wraps a mystery in an enigma, cloaks it in allusion, and ties it up neatly in harebrained humor. K, an overly erudite killer who speaks and thinks in a nonstop stream of wisecracks, bons mots, and epigrams, begins to feel guilt over his career choice after his latest hit urbanely informs him as he lies dying, “I believe you’ve mistaken me for someone else, my good man.” This sense of disquiet is exacerbated when a man dressed as a nun in a Sally Field mask on a fat-wheeled mountain bike tells him that he is on the wrong side, supplying him with anagrams to back up his statement. After “The HEAD” (K’s “bobble-head” of a boss, whose syntax is reminiscent of Yoda’s) tries to kill him, K is finally convinced. He sets out on a journey to Wyoming, encountering a Shakespearean pornography shop, a Native American shaman who worships basketball legend Michael Jordan, earth-mother mysticism, as well as his tripped-out brother-in-law, his nagging sister, their adopted Shoshone daughter, and massive doses of self-doubt, existential ennui, linguistics lessons, and peyote. As K follows leads, including those fed to him by unlikely seers, soothsayers, prophets, and saviors, he discovers a plot that, quite literally, will shake the Earth’s foundations. Meanwhile, he also falls in love with a newscaster. The climax arrives in a complex amalgam of soul-searching, mysticism, psychedelics, and good old-fashioned action. Equal parts James Joyce, Franz Kafka, and Dave Barry, this farcical romp is packed with puns, literary references, anagrams, palindromes, and all manner of wordplay, including a lipogram—an obscure word game in which one avoids using a particular letter or group of letters. Krass manages to successfully juggle the book’s multiple levels while delivering dialogue that’s a series of one-liners—some intellectual, some aimed at the gut. At the same time, he skillfully moves the action along, maintaining tension and an overall sense of mystery, and wields a biting wit with such unique imagery as “tumbleweed eyebrows” and twisted, invented words, such as “alwaysthemore” and “lessunder.” Overall, it’s a well-plotted, intricate work filled with humor, insight, and adventure.
This clever mystery will particularly delight hard-core wordophiles—and send them scrambling for the dictionary.Pub Date: June 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-692-43898-5
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Pajwood Farm
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
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
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