Hambly knows her stuff (voodoo amulets, river soundings, Latin tags, African songs, laudanum derivatives, pre–Civil War...
Free man of color Benjamin January (Days of the Dead, 2003, etc.) encounters slave traders and abolitionists while trying to save the Bank of Louisiana from going under in 1836.
As dishonest manager Oliver Weems packs up the New Orleans bank’s assets and boards the steamboat Silver Moon, Ben, acting as valet to his white friend, opium-addicted Hannibal Sefton, boards right behind, his wife Rose below deck with the other Negro womenfolk and the slaves belonging to warring traders Ned Gleet and Jubal Cain. Casting off, the Silver Moon rams into sandbars as card sharks prowl the game room, pirates lie in wait, suspiciously docile slaves stop singing one midnight, a certifiable hussy propositions several of the men, and someone tosses Weems overboard. Passenger Jefferson Davis unofficially takes command, but Ben must (1) figure out who killed Weems, (2) discover who engineered a duel between ship Sefton and Captain Molloy that’s left Ben in danger of being sold up the river, and (3) go mano à mano with spurious abolitionist Levi Christmas. Just before the Silver Moon is scuttled, a few hard truths emerge: the Underground Railroad sometimes runs on water, and bank robbers sometimes leave their booty behind to reclaim another day when it’s safer.
Hambly knows her stuff (voodoo amulets, river soundings, Latin tags, African songs, laudanum derivatives, pre–Civil War tracts) and is one of a handful of historical writers who’s mastered the conventions of the classic mystery puzzle.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2004
ISBN: 0-553-10964-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2004
Very slow off the mark, though once blackmail and murder enter the picture, Scottoline moves things along with her customary...
In Scottoline’s latest family-centered thriller (Accused, 2013, etc.), Jake Buckman lets son Ryan drive the family car on a back road. Very bad idea.
The car hits someone, and she’s dead. Faced with the prospect of his teenager’s life being ruined, Jake tells him to get back in the car, and they drive away. “[D]on’t tell Mom,” Jake warns; he loves his wife, but Pam has the personality you’d expect of a superior court judge (judgmental), and their marriage is still recovering from Jake’s decision to start his own business, which has made him a mostly absentee husband and father. He’s now “one of the top-ten ranked financial planners in southeastern Pennsylvania,” though his planning skills aren’t evident as Jake ineptly tries to cover their tracks. He also has a terrible time keeping his son from confessing once they learn that the dead girl is Ryan’s high school classmate Kathleen Lindstrom. It takes more than 100 pages for the plot to involve anything other than Jake’s nerves, Pam’s suspicions and Ryan’s guilty wails, all of which are believable but not very interesting. Sleazy blackmailer Lewis Deaner livens things up, especially after he turns up murdered. If the police find those cellphone pictures Deaner had of Jake and Ryan at the scene of the crime, Jake will be a suspect. And once Ryan has blurted out the truth to his mother, furious Pam might be just as happy to see Jake in jail. The killer’s identity isn’t much of a surprise, since he’s the only character with any individual traits apart from the Buckmans and the cops, but the final twist comes out of nowhere, 10 pages from the end.
Very slow off the mark, though once blackmail and murder enter the picture, Scottoline moves things along with her customary professionalism, if scant credibility.Pub Date: April 8, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-250-01009-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
Sophomore slump.
More psychological suspense from the author of Final Girls (2017).
Anyone who grew up watching horror movies in the 1980s knows that summer camp can be a dangerous place. It certainly was for Emma Davis during her first stay at Camp Nightingale. The other three girls in her cabin disappeared one night, never to return. Fifteen years have passed, years in which Emma has revisited this ordeal again and again through her work as a painter. When she’s offered another opportunity to spend a summer at the camp, Emma barely hesitates. She’s ostensibly there to serve as an art instructor, but her real mission is to finally find out what happened to her friends. Thrillers are, by their very nature, formulaic. Sager met the demands of the genre while offering a fresh, anxiety-inducing story in Final Girls. The author is less successful here. Part of the problem is the pacing. It’s so slow that the reader has ample time to notice how contrived the novel’s setup is. Emma is clearly unwell, so her decision to go back to the site of her trauma makes some sense, but it’s hard to believe that the camp’s owners would want her back, especially since she played a pivotal role in turning one of them into a suspect and nearly ruining his life. As a first-person narrator, Emma withholds a lot of information, which feels fake and frustrating; moreover, the revelations—when they come—are hardly worth the wait. And it’s hard to trust an author who gets so many details wrong. For example, Emma’s first summer at Camp Nightingale would have been around 2003 or so. It beggars belief that a 13-year-old millennial wouldn’t be amply prepared for her first period, but that’s what Sager wants readers to think. There’s a contemporary scene in which girls walk by in a cloud of baby powder, Noxzema, and strawberry-scented shampoo, imagery that is intensely evocative of the 1970s and '80s—not so much 2018. The novel is shot through with such discordant moments, moments that lift us right out of the narrative and shatter the suspense.
Sophomore slump.Pub Date: July 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4307-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
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