An engaging and often quirky mystery.
In her fourth Witherston murder mystery, Craige (Aldo, 2018, etc.) takes on white nationalism and anti-immigrant fervor.
One day in 1968, in the fictional Appalachian town of Witherston, Georgia, African-American 18-year-old Tyrone Lincoln Lewis and white 18-year old Allie Marie Camhurst were on their way to be married when four members of the Ku Klux Klan stopped their car. Tyrone was killed and Allie was raped, but her body was never found. Now, in 2018, Witherston has a special Labor Day Moonshine Festival approaching. The town council has voted to declare Witherston a “Sanctuary city” for undocumented immigrants. As a result, a fringe white-nationalist group, the Saxxons for America, has begun threatening the town, dropping racist leaflets from a drone. Then there’s a new murder. Sixty-five-year-old Crockett Wood, who uses his old broken-down cabin as a hunting retreat, has been shot dead through the small, half-moon aperture in his outhouse door. Wood, who’s white, had a grandfather who was a KKK member. Speculation grows that the two murders, separated by 50 years, are somehow connected. In this series installment, Craige’s unique ensemble cast features Dr. Charlotte “Lottie” Byrd, a town council member, historian, and columnist for Witherston on the Web. She researches Lewis’ 1968 murder and Camhurst’s disappearance while her niece, police Detective Mev Arroyo, investigates the Wood shooting. Despite the seriousness of Craige’s left-leaning narrative, there are also moments of lightheartedness. For example, Witherston is shown to have moved beyond its reputation as a Prohibition moonshine mecca and is now a New Age enclave of diversity; several 20- and 30-somethings who can claim varying degrees of connection to the Cherokee Nation, have set up Tayanita Village to honor their heritage by living in yurts, raising their own food, and weaving traditional baskets; however, Craige adds, ironically, “But they also had…smart phones, computers, cars, bank accounts, and day jobs.” Lively banter, fun articles from the local online news site, and enjoyably offbeat weather reports lighten the sometimes-preachy tone.
An engaging and often quirky mystery.Pub Date: July 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64437-149-7
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Black Opal Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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