A frothy adventure with a cache of inventive weaponry and a final surprise.
A hair salon owner finds herself in the middle of another murder mystery, much to the dismay of her favorite police detective.
Valentine Beaumont, owner of Beaumont’s beauty parlor, is having a very bad morning. First, she poked her eye with her mascara wand. Then she walked out on her porch only to discover that somebody had left an upright sex toy there with a perm rod wrapped around it—an ominous reference to the time she caught a murderer by using a similar implement to injure his “family jewels.” It’s clear that the most infamous stylist in Rueland, Massachusetts, is being stalked. Still, she shows up to help her friend Jimmy O’Shea get ready for the grand opening of his new pub, the Wee Irish Dude. (Jimmy was a California surfer before moving to Rueland years ago.) As Valentine and the entertainingly offbeat staff at Beaumont’s begin to clean and set up, a large beer keg comes crashing down the pub’s staircase. It breaks open, revealing the dead body of Jimmy’s cousin, Dooley. McFarlane’s (Murders, Curlers & Cruises, 2018, etc.) fourth volume of her madcap mystery series is off to a rousing start as the police arrive, headed by Michael Romero, a man that Valentine calls a “extremely sexy, ruggedly handsome, tough police detective.” He brings more bad news: Ziggy Stoaks, the killer taken down by Valentine’s perm rod, has escaped from prison. This beach-read lark is part cozy mystery and part farce, as when Valentine defends herself by squirting hand lotion into the mouth of a gun-wielding assailant. The feisty, pleasantly sarcastic heroine is an able narrator who can turn just about anything in her bag of beauty supplies into an imaginative weapon—even if it’s just a rubber band. Well-paced action scenes and two romantic suitors add to the fun. Of the latter, Romero has the inside track, but McFarlane makes Jock, an Argentinian hair stylist, very tempting.
A frothy adventure with a cache of inventive weaponry and a final surprise.Pub Date: July 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9953076-7-4
Page Count: 196
Publisher: ParadiseDeer Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
With lantern-lit tales of old China, a rich humanity, and an acute ear for bicultural tuning, a splendid first novel—one...
An inordinately moving, electric exploration of two warring cultures fused in love, focused on the lives of four Chinese women—who emigrated, in their youth, at various times, to San Francisco—and their very American 30-ish daughters.
Tan probes the tension of love and often angry bewilderment as the older women watch their daughters "as from another shore," and the daughters struggle to free themselves from maddening threads of arcane obligation. More than the gap between generations, more than the dwindling of old ways, the Chinese mothers most fear that their own hopes and truths—the secret gardens of the spirit that they have cultivated in the very worst of times—will not take root. A Chinese mother's responsibility here is to "give [my daughter] my spirit." The Joy Luck Club, begun in 1939 San Francisco, was a re-creation of the Club founded by Suyuan Woo in a beleaguered Chinese city. There, in the stench of starvation and death, four women told their "good stories," tried their luck with mah-jongg, laughed, and "feasted" on scraps. Should we, thought Suyuan, "wait for death or choose our own happiness?" Now, the Chinese women in America tell their stories (but not to their daughters or to one another): in China, an unwilling bride uses her wits, learns that she is "strong. . .like the wind"; another witnesses the suicide of her mother; and there are tales of terror, humiliation and despair. One recognizes fate but survives. But what of the American daughters—in turn grieved, furious, exasperated, amused ("You can't ever tell a Chinese mother to shut up")? The daughters, in their confessional chapters, have attempted childhood rebellions—like the young chess champion; ever on maternal display, who learned that wiles of the chessboard did not apply when opposing Mother, who had warned her: "Strongest wind cannot be seen." Other daughters—in adulthood, in crises, and drifting or upscale life-styles—tilt with mothers, one of whom wonders: "How can she be her own person? When did I give her up?"
With lantern-lit tales of old China, a rich humanity, and an acute ear for bicultural tuning, a splendid first novel—one that matches the vigor and sensitivity of Maxine Hong Kingston (The Warrior Woman, 1976; China Men, 1980) in her tributes to the abundant heritage of Chinese-Americans.Pub Date: March 22, 1989
ISBN: 0143038095
Page Count: -
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1989
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
Ragtime is a great billiard game of events, ideas and personages at the turn of the century, where the real protagonist is America herself captured in the last gasps of complacency and social Darwinism—waging territorial wars abroad for God, Country and Mammon, breaking strikes and throwing charity balls at home while WW I hovers in the wings. After this, the national identity will never be the same. Doctorow's The Book of Daniel (1971) mythified the Rosenbergs and their children, but Ragtime galvanizes the headlines and heroes of an entire formative era in a political work of even greater magnitude. At the heart of the story is the stultifyingly Victorian model family of a respectable manufacturer of flags, fireworks and patriotic odds and ends whose somewhat Moses-like recovery of an abandoned illegitimate black infant leads to an exemplary tale of racism, insurrection and injustice in America. This is fleshed out by a succession of wildly imaginative run-ins with (or among) Sigmund Freud, Emma Goldman, Houdini, Henry Ford, J. P. Morgan, Booker Washington, Zapata and of course—the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. At that time "There were no Negroes...There were no immigrants" and that's the bluntly hammered-out theme that pulls it all together: the vulgarity of the wealthy and their oppression of the lower classes. Rest assured, nevertheless, that this is a very funny novel—a high achievement in irony that hinges on distancing and if not history's revenge (the last laugh belongs to a deranged parasitic scion...), then the revenge of art. For this is a beautifully realized complex of social epiphanies, all watched over by the spirit of Scott Joplin, and as a midsummer selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club, bound to make an impact.
Pub Date: July 14, 1975
ISBN: 0679602976
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1975
PROFILES
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
