A feverishly readable psychological noir.
A fugitive embezzler in need of a fresh start gambles on assuming the identity of a presumed off-the-grid video game maven.
For lovers of crime fiction, there can be no more seductive catnip than a caper about a compromised antihero desperate to change his life for the better, the unhappily married femme fatale who is going to make that exceedingly difficult, a detective who is suspicious of both of them, and a rising body count. The book’s title alone evokes distinctive film noirs past like Johnny Allegro, Johnny Eager, and Johnny O’Clock. But this is no warmed-over pastiche. Tom Gantry is the kind of hard-luck case for whom “every place I walk into lately turns out to be the wrong place.” But then the thief meets John Manis, a reclusive former software god to whom Gantry bears an uncanny resemblance. One sailboat “accident” later and Gantry gets the opportunity for a second chance with Manis’ passport, wealth, and freedom. After a “slow westward drift through the casinos of New Orleans and Las Vegas,” Gantry buys a young entrepreneur’s business in a Napa Valley town and sets himself up as the Computer Kid, servicing the tech needs of the affluent residents. Two things muck up the works: Manis’ unceasing voice in his head (“What are you up to this time? Even I don’t get it”) and Marilyn Dupree, whose husband treats her cruelly. When Gantry meets the ravishing Dupree, “the fuse” is lit. Their passionate affair does not go unnoticed by Lou Eisenfall, a local cop, especially when the story takes some deadly turns. The novel’s central conceit does strain credulity: Certainly the re-emergence of a long-missing person of Manis’ stature would go viral and unmask the imposter. But all is forgiven when Diamond (Impala, 2016, etc.) nails an evocative, nihilistic, hard-boiled style that fans of Jim Thompson and the like will admire (“She saw something in me and I saw something in her, and whether or not it was something good, something was better than nothing”). A screen adaptation would be manna for character actors portraying Gantry’s intriguing customers (how about Blythe Danner as the Lemonade Lady?).
A feverishly readable psychological noir.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9963507-7-8
Page Count: 290
Publisher: Stolen Time Press
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2019
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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