Striking characters populate a remarkable tale blending mystery and suspense.
Citizens in a Pacific Northwest town face assorted threats—both domestic and foreign—in this third installment of a series.
Wealthy farmer Jeff Henderson has funded a new cancer wing for the Skagit Valley Hospital. At the wing’s dedication, Henderson’s neighbor Joseph intercepts two hooligans stealing wallets and purses. But those men may be more than mere thieves, as they later target Joseph’s property, specifically his work with mushrooms. Joseph’s mushroom experiments are part of his University of Washington–endorsed research into a cure for cancer. Based on a cryptic message he recently received, Joseph fears his family’s Russia-related past may compromise his research. Meanwhile, locals are protesting the alleged unfair treatment of migrant workers at the Henderson Farm. But Henderson may have more substantial problems than the boycott of his blueberry fields. Joseph—along with Henderson’s teen daughter, Hannah, and her boyfriend (and her father’s ex-employee), Luis—gradually unearths copious illicit deeds, from drug smuggling to possible hacking. It’s abundantly clear there’s a menace in Skagit Valley, as the culprits who break into the university’s lab are likely the same individuals physically assaulting and abducting townspeople. But the baddies’ ultimate goal is something bigger than Joseph or anyone else has anticipated. Rolnick’s (Color of Lies, 2018, etc.) novel is jam-packed with richly defined characters, including several from earlier series installments (generally in supporting roles). Murky character backgrounds often enhance the overall mystery, like enigmatic Frank McCain, Joseph’s friend who lives in an airport hangar. In other instances, histories provide sympathy: Hannah lost her twin sister, Jenna, to cancer four years ago, and immigration officials deported Luis’ parents to Ecuador. Much of the story revolves around a string of startling incidents and the attempts to identify the specific villains. At times, the events are overwhelming and convoluted even to the story’s characters: “I can’t keep it all straight,” admits one individual. Nevertheless, the author’s pithy writing helps retain a discernible tension throughout the narrative, with many of the characters finding it hard to trust anyone.
Striking characters populate a remarkable tale blending mystery and suspense.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-9995291-4-0
Page Count: -
Publisher: Sedro Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
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