by B A Smith ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 3, 2013
A plot-driven tale of intrigue and human attraction.
From the hills of Santa Barbara to a liaison in Nicaragua, Smith’s (The Psychology of Sex & Gender, 2006) energetic mystery, the first in a planned series, pieces together a fast-paced tale of murder and love.
After a well-to-do screenwriter claims to have accidentally discovered the gory remains of a beautiful young woman at Painted Cave, in Santa Barbara, Calif., Detective Robin Crane—a smart, ambitious and attractive single mother—is assigned as primary detective on the case. Partnered with her ex-boyfriend Detective Doug Debayle (with whom she’s still in love), Robin leads the investigation, and the two are aided by the expert forensic guidance of a no-nonsense medical examiner. Meanwhile, an older case resurfaces with possible connections: A young woman named Sara Castillo had been killed in a supposed car accident on a foggy night in 2006. It turns out that both of the victims were beautiful Latina students with strikingly similar features. Enter professor Plask, a noted university academic who travels to Nicaragua for anthropological research and who, it is soon discovered, has questionable forays with his female students. Could the publicly respected professor be involved? Or is the screenwriter who discovered the body at Painted Cave setting the stage for a twisted new script of his own? This whodunit mainly focuses on trying to capture the nefarious villain, culminating in a horrific—and surprising—tragedy and subsequent arrest. Smith adds splashes of romance as the detectives dig their way through evidence with some bantering and sexual tension. The book brings to mind episodes of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, with changing dates and characters that can be a bit dizzying at first (the old, unsolved murder begins in the prologue). However, the author clearly notes all dates in the chapter titles, and readers who persevere will soon see the connections among characters. A somewhat unexpected romantic conclusion, which comes quickly in the book’s epilogue, feels contrived, but it leaves the door open for further installments in the adventures of the gutsy Robin Crane.
A plot-driven tale of intrigue and human attraction.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-0615771496
Page Count: 306
Publisher: Rough Waters Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 26, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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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
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by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
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