An ordinary crime story improved by a dash of Italian flavor.
When an unpopular restaurateur is stabbed in the back at Sophia Mancini’s family dinner party, the intrepid private eye combs through her 1940s Italian-American community on the hunt for the killer.
Mickelson’s (Carol’s Christmas, 2012, etc.) Little Italy–set murder mystery, the first of a planned series, features a wide cast of characters: an amnesiac WWII veteran, wives hoping to be widows, sleazy gangsters and cops showing up to murder scenes in baseball uniforms. At the center of it all is Sophia, who runs a newly formed detective agency with her brother, Angelo, the amnesiac vet. They’re desperately in need of a murder case to bring in some money so they can prove to the court that Angelo’s son will be provided for. At a dinner to celebrate the Mancini’s new business venture, the restaurant owner, Vincenzo, is murdered; everyone’s a suspect. The police don’t want Sophie snooping about, but the local mob boss, Frank Vidoni, hires her to solve the crime before the police do, since unauthorized murder in his territory damages his reputation as a crime lord. On the way to solving the crime, Sophie runs across numerous strange and memorable characters, including Eugene Gallo, Vincenzo’s bizarre business partner; Stella, Vincenzo’s wife, who had hoped he wouldn’t come home from the war; and Maria Acino, Frank’s beautiful but childish mistress, who always seems to materialize into a scene out of thin air. The characters make standard detective-story fare stand out. With such a large group of people to work with, readers might expect some of the characters to blur together or messily coalesce, but that’s not the case. Everyone’s well-realized and fully fleshed-out, with the possible exception of the extended Mancini family, who remain faithful to typical big, Italian-American family stereotypes. Despite the somewhat conventional, unsurprising plot, Mickelson’s novel remains compulsively readable and consistently entertaining.
An ordinary crime story improved by a dash of Italian flavor.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2012
ISBN: 978-0985129606
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Bon Accord Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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