A sometimes-excessive but humorous tale for mystery lovers and foodies.
In Toeller’s debut romance, when a food maven finds a dead body in an armoire in her hotel room, she and a handsome FBI agent are on the case—and a suitably confusing case it is.
The FBI and its German equivalent, the BKA, are desperate to find a particular, tiny computer chip before the bad guys do—one that could be used to cause global economic and political catastrophe. Layne Stevens, the attractive and endearingly klutzy star of her own TV cooking show, is in San Francisco gathering material for an upcoming episode about appetizers when she happens upon the aforementioned corpse. A crack FBI team, led by agent Ryan Cooke, swoops in and secures the crime scene. Layne and Ryan quickly fall in lust, then in love, against a backdrop of chaos and suspicion. Just who are the villains behind the killing, who are controlled by a mysterious entity called “The Employer”? Always lurking nearby is mysterious sharpshooter Sonny Wright, who’s adept at blending into crowds, and later, it appears that an agent may have gone rogue. Things come to a head when Layne and Ryan go to a safe house in the sticks, which turns out to be not so safe at all. As the story goes on, the surprises keep coming, and Toeller shows off an exuberant prose style throughout. However, this exuberance can sometimes spill over into self-indulgence, with occasional sophomoric sexual innuendos and dildo jokes. However, readers who have a high tolerance for the improbable and enjoy a traditional happy ending will like this story, which is the first in a planned series. There are some genuinely amusing scenes, such as a dinner at the Rue de Rêves restaurant with eccentric chef Philippe Degasse. Also, Toeller really does know her recipes—a plus for those who want to test their palates.
A sometimes-excessive but humorous tale for mystery lovers and foodies.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9970647-0-4
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Cliff House Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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