A San Francisco reporter might lose more than her job when her editor forces her to investigate the supposed suicides of two New York breeders of prizewinning dairy cattle.
In this debut novel, Cora Brooks is a veteran on the police beat for the San Francisco Standard. She is 45 and suffering the indignities of “an ungrateful son, a husband who’d found a younger woman, a body run amok,” not to mention an unsympathetic editor who seems bent on replacing her with an Eve Carrington–like rival reporter. Despite her protests, Brooks is dispatched to New York on the whim of her publisher to follow up on a New York Times story about two dead men, found in separate locations. One of them, Sean O’Brien, was the publisher’s friend. The other was Franklin Santerra, a dairyman who, over a four-month period, sold O’Brien three highly insured prize cows, each of which died within four weeks of the transaction. Over the course of a fraud investigation, O’Brien ingested strychnine, and Santerra, four days later, blew his head off with a shotgun. Brooks has her suspicions, not about the case, but concerning the editor’s motivation for sending her: “You think I’ll screw up so you can fire me. Save one layoff.” The seasoned reporter does not anticipate becoming part of the story as she uncovers links to her own haunted past and seeks closure to the mystery of the mother who abandoned her. The book alternates chapters Gone Girl–style, a device that works intermittently. At one point, Brooks is the focus of five consecutive chapters. Others are devoted to Abby, a woman at the turn of the century who becomes involved with an O’Brien ancestor; State Police Maj. Del Somer, who was once married to O’Brien’s widow; and Alice, Brooks’ elusive mother. Da Vigo has a strong sense of place and writes authentically about a profession under siege by corporate takeovers. And in Brooks, she has created a flawed but capable and empathetic character. “You’re a pisser, aren’t you?” Somer asks at one point. “Only in my better moments,” she replies.
Stop the presses! An appealing crime-fiction heroine is born.
Pub Date: April 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9745722-1-5
Page Count: 428
Publisher: Quill Driver Press
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
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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