A sometimes cloudy but uncanny mystery, filled with revelations that dazzle like summer lightning.
In LeMay’s quirky debut, a teenager confronts the mysteries surrounding the Renaissance Faire run by his family.
Five years ago, tragedy struck the Mad Brothers Renaissance Faire. Ginger, a beloved Bengal tiger, fatally mauled Matt Madison, the fair’s owner. Since then, Matt’s 17-year-old son, Simon, has craved nothing but solitude in quaint Freemont, S.C, where his life is anything but easy: His mother is mentally ill, his grandfather is wheelchair-bound, and he hates the family business. Tommy, a hardworking friend of Simon’s father, runs the faire himself. Only the arrival of teen psychic Amanda Moon is able to shake Simon from his detachment. Charming, ethereal and living next door in his father’s old trailer, Amanda also believes that someone used Ginger to murder Matt. Enraged by this, Simon seeks out Tommy's tranquil company. The older man tells Simon that he will inherit the faire upon turning 18 if he’s willing to work the grounds part-time; if not, ownership goes to his cousin Aaron, an irresponsible playboy. Further complicating Simon’s life are Amanda’s visions of crosses, the pesky school principal, Dr. Danvers, and the mutilated body of a fellow student found in the local swamp. Simon can’t seem to escape any of it; however, after helping Amanda find the first of three engraved crosses, he no longer wants to. He commits to discovering the truth, although LeMay, a crafty, attentive writer, buries it deeply. The melancholy world quickly surrounds the reader, baiting the imagination with beautiful moments, such as Simon dreaming of Ginger: “Just as she was within arm’s reach, she exploded into a thousand butterflies and fluttered away in as many directions.” Equally memorable are passages highlighting Simon’s transformation from teen to young man: “One minute I was hollow and meandering and the next minute I was filled and directed.” The novel’s first third, which draws several fascinating character portraits, is especially enchanting. But once there’s a fresh murder to solve, LeMay’s writing grows tangled with long phone calls and car rides, and plot points sometimes mix with extraneous detail, creating a bog. By the end, though, LeMay cuts through it all for a satisfying finale.
A sometimes cloudy but uncanny mystery, filled with revelations that dazzle like summer lightning.Pub Date: April 17, 2013
ISBN: 978-1482563054
Page Count: 292
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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BOOK TO SCREEN
Falls short of Crichton’s many blockbusters, but fun reading nonetheless, especially for those interested in the early days...
In 1876, professor Edward Cope takes a group of students to the unforgiving American West to hunt for dinosaur fossils, and they make a tremendous discovery.
William Jason Tertullius Johnson, son of a shipbuilder and beneficiary of his father’s largess, isn’t doing very well at Yale when he makes a bet with his archrival (because every young man has one): accompany “the bone professor” Othniel Marsh to the West to dig for dinosaur fossils or pony up $1,000, but Marsh will only let Johnson join if he has a skill they can use. They need a photographer, so Johnson throws himself into the grueling task of learning photography, eventually becoming proficient. When Marsh and the team leave without him, he hitches a ride with another celebrated paleontologist, Marsh’s bitter rival, Edward Cope. Despite warnings about Indian activity, into the Judith badlands they go. It’s a harrowing trip: they weather everything from stampeding buffalo to back-breaking work, but it proves to be worth it after they discover the teeth of what looks to be a giant dinosaur, and it could be the discovery of the century if they can only get them back home safely. When the team gets separated while transporting the bones, Johnson finds himself in Deadwood and must find a way to get the bones home—and stay alive doing it. The manuscript for this novel was discovered in Crichton’s (Pirate Latitudes, 2009, etc.) archives by his wife, Sherri, and predates Jurassic Park (1990), but if readers are looking for the same experience, they may be disappointed: it’s strictly formulaic stuff. Famous folk like the Earp brothers make appearances, and Cope and Marsh, and the feud between them, were very real, although Johnson is the author’s own creation. Crichton takes a sympathetic view of American Indians and their plight, and his appreciation of the American West, and its harsh beauty, is obvious.
Falls short of Crichton’s many blockbusters, but fun reading nonetheless, especially for those interested in the early days of American paleontology.Pub Date: May 23, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-247335-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
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