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HIGH SEAS DARKNESS

A BRICK MORGAN NOVEL

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In Anderson’s (The Drummer, 2012) thriller, a private investigator faces off against radical Islamic terrorists who have targeted a line of cruise ships.
Former cop Brick Morgan is the founder of Morgan Maritime Investigations. He’s contracted his efficient, no-nonsense services to Nobility Cruise Line. When a woman named Carolyn Luna is drugged and raped aboard the Matisse Under the Stars, Chief Security Officer Yvette Fuentes requests Morgan’s help finding the perpetrator before the FBI gets involved. Combining their suave investigative efforts, Morgan and Fuentes arrest bartender Sanan Jaidee in record time. To celebrate, Morgan decides to enjoy the rest of the cruise as it leaves Hawaii for the mainland United States. Trouble erupts again when dozens of passengers become ill from what seems to be a norovirus. However, the sickness actually comes from the release of poisonous abrin by radical Islamist Yusuf Al Omar. Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., the president has instructed the FBI to mislabel terrorist threats as “workplace violence” in an effort to cool tensions between mainstream Islam and America. How will this decision affect Morgan and Fuentes? They survived the first Matisse incident, but now they’re embroiled in a more vicious attack. Anderson juggles an impressive array of narrative elements—from disease containment aboard ships to international submarine surveillance—resulting in a quickly paced, satisfying narrative. Morgan is a classic tough-guy-gentleman, irresistible to women and terrifying to lawbreakers. The villains are also multidimensional, as when Jaidee rages about Luna: “That blonde...would spend more money on her cruise than he would make in a year.” There’s also a staggering amount of technical detail about cruise liner engineering and operations, which adds a layer of stark realism to the plot. Some readers, however, may bridle at the off-color jokes (as only beat cops can tell) and campy portrayals of women, as when Fuentes “suggestively pulled [the french fry] into and out of her pursed lips.” Overall, though, there’s an admirable anti-terror message here that hopes to encourage increased vigilance and cooperation between politicians and people.

A patriotic thriller that’s not for the faint of heart.

Pub Date: June 9, 2014

ISBN: 978-1478735939

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Outskirts Press Inc.

Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2014

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A LITTLE LIFE

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

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Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.

Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.  

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

Pub Date: March 10, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8

Page Count: 720

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.

Pub Date: July 11, 1960

ISBN: 0060935464

Page Count: 323

Publisher: Lippincott

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960

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