An engaging romp that fuses love, art, and seedy, midcentury New York.
A struggling freelance artist in 1957 forms an unlikely relationship with a New York mobster in this quirky throwback to the ’50s crime novel.
Silva (The Patsey, 2012) begins his narrative with a bang—quite literally. Frank Caprizzi, former “Boss of the New York Underworld,” is shot (but not killed) in the lobby of the residential Royal Crest Hotel. After this grabber of an opening, readers meet protagonist Joe Marlin, a West Coast expatriate who has moved to New York City with his girlfriend, Gilda; he wants to establish himself as a career cartoonist, and she seeks to make her mark as an actress. They live in a $30-a-week Upper West Side hotel apartment, not far from where Caprizzi was shot. But Joe, a decent guy, soon finds himself pulled into a world of violence due to Gilda’s liaison with mob-connected producer Tony Richman. Gilda met Tony in postwar Germany, and now she hopes that he’ll be her ticket to stage and screen. What follows is betrayal, a few murders, and prolonged pub crawls that are almost Joe’s undoing. Ironically, Joe’s possible salvation arrives when he meets the recovering mobster Caprizzi, who loves the crime comics of the late 1940s and early ’50s. Silva apparently created Joe by drawing on aspects of his own biography: both were students at the LA–based Chouinard Art Institute, worked in Disney Studios’ animation department, and decided to try their luck as cartoonists in the Big Apple. The author draws upon this resume to deliver realistic descriptions of the mechanical details of Joe’s work, his weekly slogs trying to sell his cartoons, and his attempts at networking with other artists. With the eye of an artist and the heart of a romantic, Silva also takes readers on a nostalgic tour of 1957 New York, including visits to the jazz haunts and private artist parties of Greenwich Village in its heyday. Although the prose is neither elegant nor lyrical, it remains serviceable and adequately showcases the author’s bent for the dramatic. Joe’s alcoholic binges do become tiresome, but the book maintains a relatively quick pace, employing short chapters to propel the action forward.
An engaging romp that fuses love, art, and seedy, midcentury New York.Pub Date: June 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-61009-165-7
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Dark Oak Mysteries
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2016
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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