The main attraction here is a troubled detective who doesn’t fit the mold.
With the 1889 Paris Exposition as a backdrop, Hansen’s whodunit is a mélange of the strange, the infamous, and the grisly.
In a morgue not far from Notre Dame de Paris, a daily display of unidentified bodies has become a macabre public attraction. Among the cadavers lies a beautiful young woman with a Mona Lisa smile, pulled from the Seine, a presumed suicide. A preface reveals that the real woman called “L’Inconnue,” or "the Unknown," whose plaster death mask became a sensational objet d’art, was not only the model for the first CPR dummy, but the source of endless speculation as to the circumstances of her demise. This speculation drives the extended flashback that comprises most of Hansen’s novel. We first see the woman—alive, that is—in a forest near the road to Paris. She has killed a man who, the reader assumes, has raped her and buried his body ineptly. She then enters a nearby covered wagon, pulled by a donkey, and drives it to Paris. En route, there’s a chance encounter with Brassard, a disgraced police officer who senses she’s behind the dead body he and his dog discovered earlier, disinterred by wolves. Brassard surreptitiously tails the wagon to Paris. A colorful panoply of peripheral characters, including a hapless artist and an “impresario of the lower entertainments,” and settings like the Paris catacombs and, of course, the newly erected Eiffel Tower distracts us from the meandering irrelevancies of the plot. By investigating the young woman, is Brassard seeking to overcome the contretemps that led him to join a Foreign Legion mission to Indochina and lose an ear? Is the novel really about the sexual abuse the unknown woman endures in life and her objectification after death? Or is it merely a display case for Hansen’s gorgeous prose, which sometimes sacrifices meaning on the altar of mellifluousness?
The main attraction here is a troubled detective who doesn’t fit the mold.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-953002-05-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Delphinium
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
As the prosecutor sadly observes: “All this because of a dead buffalo.”
Idyllic Catalina Island turns out to be just as crime infested as the rest of Los Angeles County in the latest series launch by the creator of Harry Bosch, Renée Ballard, and the Lincoln Lawyer.
Det. Sgt. Stilwell has been bounced off the county homicide squad and rusticized to Catalina, where the exclusive Black Marlin Club won’t admit even four-term Avalon Mayor Doug Allen to full membership and the most serious infraction seems to be the killing and cutting up of a buffalo, presumably by Henry Gaston, who operates Island Mystery Tours when he’s not threatening endangered species. All that changes with the discovery of a body sunk in the surrounding waters. The corpse, most recognizable by its streak of purple hair, is that of Leigh-Anne Moss, a Black Marlin server recently fired for fraternizing with members and guests she sees as potential sugar daddies. Stilwell is sufficiently invested in her murder to compete vigorously over jurisdiction with Rex Ahearn, the LA County homicide detective who kept his job when Stilwell lost his. Their rivalry, fueled by mutual contempt, is only the first hint that Stilwell will end up fighting his counterparts in law enforcement and local government at least as hard as he fights crooks like hit man Merris Spivak and Oscar “Baby Head” Terranova, Henry’s boss, who comes under sharper scrutiny when Henry disappears and ends up dead himself. Connelly handles his hero’s obligatory romance with assistant harbormaster Tash Dano and his increasingly wary alliance with assistant D.A. Monika Juarez with equal professionalism, and if the wrap-up leaves some loose ends dangling, well, that’s what franchises are for.
As the prosecutor sadly observes: “All this because of a dead buffalo.”Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9780316588485
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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