A very strange police procedural that could be a fun diversion for readers whose appetites for certain genres overlap.
Zombie cop returns from the grave to hunt down the serial killer who gunned him down.
Belgian crime novelist Dhooge takes a seemingly straightforward concept for this genre-bender but applies an interesting surrealist patina to his detective story. The novel opens on the title character, homicide detective Raphael Styx, who is a man of many complaints, to say the least. In addition to his stressful job as a cop in Ostend, Belgium, he has a combative wife, an indifferent teenage son, and a failing hip that has him relying on painkillers and sedatives to get through the day. Styx is confronted with a series of baffling and gruesome murders of women who have been savagely mutilated and filled with sand by a serial killer dubbed “The Stuffer.” Styx believes the killer imagines himself an artist of some twisted vision. “The bastard’s trying to be the next Banksy,” he tells his boss. One night the killer confronts Styx, calling himself Léon Spilliaert after one of Ostend’s long-dead surrealist painters. “I thought you’d all forgotten about me and gone onto other playmates,” he taunts. “A true artist has to make himself heard from time to time. He’s got to get through to the stupid zombies who waste their lives staring at a computer screen. In this society we’ve created, he can’t afford to lock himself up in an ivory tower.” When he awakens after being shot in the chest three times, Styx is quite dead yet still motivated and determined to track The Stuffer down using his deductive powers along with the help of a young rival cop and the occasional intervention of other figures inspired by Ostend’s storied surrealist movement. The result is an atmospheric, noir-tinged tale about a stubborn cop who just won’t quit, even if he is dead.
A very strange police procedural that could be a fun diversion for readers whose appetites for certain genres overlap.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4767-8464-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Simon451
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
The narrator is researching for his book, The Day the World Ended, when he comes up against his karass, as he later understands it through Bokononism. It leads him to investigate Dr. Hoenniker, "Father of the A-Bomb," whom his son Little Newt says was playing cat's cradle when the bomb dropped (people weren't his specialty). The good doctor left his children an even greater weapon of devastation in ice-nine, an inheritance which won his ugly daughter a handsome husband; little Newt, a Russian midget just his size for an affair that ended when she absconded with a sliver of ice-nine; and made unlikely Franklin the right hand man of Papa Monzano of San Lorenzo, a make-believe Caribbean republic. On the trail of ice-nine, the narrator comes in for Papa's death and is tapped for the Presidency of San Lorenzo. Lured by sex symbol Mona, he accepts, but before he can take office, ice-nine breaks loose, freezing land and sea. Bokonon, the aged existentialist residing in the jungle as counter to the strong man, formulates a religion that makes up for life altogether: since the natives are miserable and there is little hope for changing their lot, he takes advantage of the release of ice-nine to bring them a happy death. The narrator's karass is at last made clear by Bokonon himself, leaving him to commit a final blasphemy against whoever is up there. A riddle on the meaning of meaninglessness or vice versa in a devastation-oriented era, with science-fiction figures on the prowl and political-ologies lanced. Spottily effective.
Pub Date: March 18, 1963
ISBN: 038533348X
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Holt Rinehart & Winston
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1963
A love letter to imagination, adventure, the written word, and the power of many kinds of love.
An independent young girl finds a blue door in a field and glimpses another world, nudging her onto a path of discovery, destiny, empowerment, and love.
Set at the turn of the 20th century, Harrow's debut novel centers on January Scaller, who grows up under the watchful eye of the wealthy Cornelius Locke, who employs her father, Julian, to travel the globe in search of odd objects and valuable treasures to pad his collection, housed in a sprawling Vermont mansion. January appears to have a charmed childhood but is stifled by the high-society old boy’s club of Mr. Locke and his friends, who treat her as a curiosity—a mixed-race girl with a precocious streak, forced into elaborate outfits and docile behavior for the annual society gatherings. When she's 17, her father seemingly disappears, and January finds a book that will change her life forever. With her motley crew of allies—Samuel, the grocer’s son; Jane, the Kenyan woman sent by Julian to be January’s companion; and Bad, her faithful dog—January embarks on an adventure that will lead her to discover secrets about Mr. Locke, the world and its hidden doorways, and her own family. Harrow employs the image of the door (“Sometimes I feel there are doors lurking in the creases of every sentence, with periods for knobs and verbs for hinges”) as well as the metaphor (a “geometry of absence”) to great effect. Similes and vivid imagery adorn nearly every page like glittering garlands. While some stereotypes are present, such as the depiction of East African women as pantherlike, the book has a diverse cast of characters and a strong woman lead. This portal fantasy doesn’t shy away from racism, classism, and sexism, which helps it succeed as an interesting story.
A love letter to imagination, adventure, the written word, and the power of many kinds of love.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-42199-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Redhook/Orbit
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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