A whirlwind of drugs, derelicts and diabolical melodrama.
A big-hearted Nebraskan and his close friend wade through a town corrupted by meth-addicted crazies.
Prell (Ka-Ching: The Repository of Universal Wisdoms, 2007), a former award-winning, nationally syndicated radio journalist, sets his murder mystery in Lincoln, Neb., a town he calls “a cesspool of crime and depravity.” The description seems apt as a deadly methamphetamine lab explosion blows “tweaker” Roy Swartz Jr.’s body into thin air. It’s a common local occurrence to Ambrose Stryker, a disfigured Iraq War veteran and corn farmer, who, together with best buddy “Stub” Stubinskie, Stryker dreams of ridding the town of this epidemic. Meanwhile, dopey speed-freak miscreants Alphonse “Big A” Beemer and Gilmore “Happy” Gilruth hatch a plan to rob a bank, but end up in jail, only to make bigger plans to transport legal meth-producing chemicals out of town. Stryker, who continues to be haunted by his harsh time in the war, becomes more annoyed than concerned about Ashed “Barry” McFarland, a shifty Iraqi taxi driver he’d met abroad and has now shows up in Polk County unannounced and desperate, “much like a virus that results in a bad cold.” McFarland gets arrested after inadvertently driving Big A and Happy around and good guy Stryker retains lusty attorney Lara Lynn Lundstrom to assist, but she’s got more than a few secrets to hide. Prell keeps the action moving and adds more shady characters to the mix, such as Reno-based drug dealer Bobette “Footsie” Kravitz and Ernst Leidke, an aging hustler servicing Lincoln’s older female demographic. The body count rises as Barry, now a key witness to the drug action, fears for his life. It’s up to Stryker and Stub to ferret out the dealers from the do-gooders and snare a few hot dates for themselves along the way. Incorporating DNA battles, lesbian drug dealers, grave-robbed bodies and explosions galore, Prell delivers humor-infused tension through an unwieldy assortment of ragtag, potty-mouthed characters. Stryker makes for a compelling protagonist; can a sequel be far behind?
A whirlwind of drugs, derelicts and diabolical melodrama.Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-0984558605
Page Count: 286
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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