The attorney protagonist getting caught up in more melodrama than lawyering makes for an unusual but convincing tale.
In this thriller, a houseboat community’s legal case against developers in 1977 California culminates in murder.
Legal Aid attorney Rick Spenser may have his first major lawsuit. Residents of Waldo Point, represented by their newly formed group, Save Our Waterfront, assert that a development company is trying to evict the houseboaters. Strawberry Point Harbor Associates’ claim of fire, safety, and health hazards unfortunately has merit, as the harbor is unquestionably burdened by exposed electrical wiring and raw sewage. The community, however, is primarily low income and would have nowhere to go if evicted. A small but significant early courtroom victory is offset by “the Strawberries” showing up at Waldo Point with a pile driver, resulting in the community’s protesters ultimately getting Maced by cops. When the case doesn’t seem to be favoring Waldo Point, sabotage temporarily shuts down the pile driver and the company’s work. A proposal later to modify and improve the Strawberries’ plan for the harbor would mean houseboaters agreeing to pay rent, threatening to divide the community as some refuse to negotiate. There’s at least one person, in fact, who takes great offense to the suggestion and opts for killing one of the residents. Despite initial shades of a legal thriller, Bush’s (What Went Wrong with Oscar Toll?, 2014) novel provides little focus on the lawsuit. But concentrating on the community generates a riveting tale, particularly once Rick finds himself immersed. The lawyer, for one, sees residents as more than the hippies that other characters perceive; sympathetic Save Our Waterfront President Achille Palaiologos is a standout, an 84-year-old who doesn’t get around much. Rick’s likewise clearly infatuated with the group’s secretary, Becky Yates. Neither of the two is single, but that doesn’t prohibit Rick’s lingering gazes or elation from her flirting, often acknowledging her recurring “low, sexy voice.” Events gradually transpire in the straightforward narrative with effective abruptness, even when—as in the case of the murder—there’s no mystery.
The attorney protagonist getting caught up in more melodrama than lawyering makes for an unusual but convincing tale.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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