Warts and all, this is escapist historical fiction that expertly renders its setting.
The killing of Harlan Winthrop is almost just a sidebar in this portrait of San Francisco in the tense early days of World War II.
Harlan Winthrop does indeed wind up dead very early on, his lifeless body found in the famous Coit Tower in front of a controversial mural featuring the graffiti “RoBerTo,” supposedly standing for Rome/Berlin/Tokyo. This clearly implicates Axis sympathizers, which launches a very secret investigation led by Tony Bosco, lawyer, former police commissioner, and go-to guy in all such matters. Tony teams up with Dennis Sullivan, a new and hunky hire, and, eventually, sassy Ruthie Adams. Winthrop, though a reactionary—he believed strongly that White Anglo-Saxons were the master race—was still respected; in fact, he was heading up the war bond drive in the city. What the reader learns early on is that he had a very kinky hidden private life. The war informs everything here in 1942. The internment of the Japanese is underway, and German and Italian citizens are suspected in many quarters. Communism (like socialism) is anathema to patriotic citizens, but now we have the embodiment of godless communism, Russia, on the side of the allies! There is also an episode with Tony driving down to Pescadero where his brother, Lorenzo, a priest, has Mexican immigrants in his parish who may be fifth columnists.
What really carries this book is the period atmosphere. The first thing that strikes the reader is how completely suffused the story is with Catholicism. Tony is an ardent Catholic (as are his Irish friends on the San Francisco Police Department), and so is his brother Enzo, of course. The Knights of Columbus is but one of many Catholic organizations that Tony belongs to. Issel is a San Francisco native and history professor emeritus at San Francisco State and has written a couple of scholarly books on Catholicism and politics in mid-20th-century San Francisco. To a bewildered reader, this nonetheless makes a lot of the book seem like gratuitous proselytizing and a bit wearying. But we like Tony anyway, almost as much as he loves his wife and his new Buick Century, “the banker’s hot rod.” Period fashions are lovingly described, as are Italian cuisine and various neighborhoods. On the downside, racism is rampant and casual, true to the times. Tony’s wife, backed by Catholic social thought, does persuade him that “Jap” is a crude and unacceptable term. And to his credit, Tony is not comfortable with the Japanese internment, and he uses his pull to see that a White and Japanese family is not broken apart—not by keeping them out of the camps but by making sure that the White wife joins her husband and daughter in them! Issel is a historian trying his hand at fiction, and it shows. Character exposition is often labored and dialogue stiff, reminiscent of Dragnet. But with the color and ambiance of Chinatown, it’s a wash.
Warts and all, this is escapist historical fiction that expertly renders its setting.Pub Date: July 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-926664-20-3
Page Count: 212
Publisher: BACAT
Review Posted Online: Sept. 5, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.
Lt. Eve Dallas’ 63rd futuristic case is less a whodunit than a manhunt for an unusually sympathetic killer.
Thirteen years ago, way back in 2048, scientific genius Steve Redman—father of the Banner-Wyst corporation’s Rainmaker Project—narrowly escaped death in a gas explosion that killed his pregnant wife and infant son and 200 other residents of their New York City apartment building the night before he planned to report his suspicions about the company to the FBI. Now the bill is coming due for Banner-Wyst. The first death to be discovered is that of Lawrence Chu, Redman’s colleague and trusted friend, whose tenure as director of bioengineering science ends when he’s beaten to death. For quite a while, Dallas and her partner, Det. Delia Peabody, know less about this mystery than their readers do. But when Ezra Dent, a consultant to Banner-Wyst who worked with Redman and Chu back in the day, is murdered in exactly the same ferocious way, Dallas and Peabody, with help from Roarke, Dallas’ tech-billionaire husband, promptly put the pieces together and determine who they’re looking for. The search for Redman, who went AWOL from his hospital bed without a trace six years ago, has its own challenges. So does Dallas’ attempt to get cooperation from partners Calvin Banner and Jacob Wyst, who are clearly in the crosshairs of a killer who seems a lot less monstrous than they are. If the breaks in the case are suspiciously convenient in arriving, readers can pride themselves on taking sides against a mega-corporation whose self-avowed ecological saintliness is undermined by its leaders’ underhanded dealing.
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2026
ISBN: 9781250414564
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2026
The delightful debut of a classic, prolific detective.
It takes a quirky sleuth to solve a baffling closed-door murder.
The author himself or, more accurately, some version of him, walks the reader through a “gruesome murder” that occurred in a rural farming village. At the center of the crime is the wealthy Ichiyanagi family, including the widow Itoko and her five children. The “heinous crime” occurs in the evening after the festive wedding of eldest son Kenzo to schoolteacher Katsuko. Yokomizo, part narrator and part raconteur, liberally shares digressions such as the fact that his favorite British author is A.A. Milne, who wrote The Red House Mystery as well as the books about Winnie-the-Pooh. Written in 1946 but set in 1937 before the devastation of World War II, this is the first novel featuring Kosuke Kindaichi, the legendary detective who appeared in more than 70 stories by Yokomizo. If Yokomizo is the Japanese Agatha Christie, Kindaichi may seem the Japanese Hercule Poirot—although actually, given his unkempt hair and apparently distracted manner, he’s more a cross between Poirot and Columbo. Shrewdly, his entrance is delayed until midway through the novel, after the police have stalled and both the family and the reader are anxious for a solution. The narrator’s garrulous charm, in a mystery long on logistics and forensic clues but short on detailed character portraits or extended interactions, is a key to the novel’s success, leavening the more intricate pieces of the puzzle. Armchair detectives will welcome the helpful character list that precedes the story.
The delightful debut of a classic, prolific detective.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781805336549
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
