A sexy, scathing insider’s view of an interior design magazine that hardly needs its murder plot to keep readers enthralled.
In this debut mystery, an ambitious young man’s rise in the magazine world is stymied by a secret history of murder and betrayal.
When Leaf Wyks, the editor of the high-end interior design magazine Inside, is found poisoned to death in her Los Angeles home, the police immediately suspect Anthony Dimora. Before Leaf abruptly fired him, Anthony was Inside’s art director and the man most likely to take her place on the masthead. Worse yet, it was Anthony who discovered Leaf’s corpse after an early morning phone call lured him to the scene. In his novel, Ross eschews the conventions of the whodunit in favor of a dishy flashback account of Anthony’s rise to the top of the interior design world and the precipitous fall that preceded Leaf’s death. Anthony was initially hired to design advertisements, but his good looks and hairy chest attracted the attention of Timmy, Leaf’s young and sexually game assistant, who, while trying to coax the new hire out of his clothes, gave up the dirt on Inside: Leaf is on the hunt for a new art director; Claret Bruin, the magazine’s publisher, has a beautiful 17-year-old son named Cole who’s notorious for seducing older men; etc. Thanks to Anthony’s singular vision and his pronounced Machiavellian streak, he finds himself working at Leaf’s side, masterminding Inside’s rise to national prominence. Meanwhile, Anthony begins to shed his sexual inhibitions, enjoying trysts with a succession of interior designers, photographers and shop boys, as he bides his time until Cole’s 18th birthday and the consummation of their burgeoning romance. To his credit, Ross manages to pack a great deal of interest and suspense into even the most technical aspects of the magazine business. When Anthony directs a photo shoot, the stakes are high, and the sexiness of the work comes through. Despite a few belabored descriptions of rooms and their furnishings, this world is so enticing that readers might nearly forget to wonder who killed Leaf Wyks and why.
A sexy, scathing insider’s view of an interior design magazine that hardly needs its murder plot to keep readers enthralled.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4922-3710-5
Page Count: 454
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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