Buried secrets and more recent betrayals prompt conflict in this slow-burning crime novel.
Thornton’s novel chronicles the interwoven lives of several small-town Nebraska residents as they grapple with past trauma. The year is 1978, but a death that occurred years earlier provides the novel with its inciting incident. “Dell Junior, the oldest of three Reddick boys, was seven when he was killed by a farmhand named Rollie Asher,” Thornton writes. It’s something that’s led to plenty of trauma within the Reddick family, made even worse because the boy's body was never found. The novel opens with sheriff's deputy Harley Jensen encountering Dell Junior’s brother Paul and observing that “the only thing young about Paul was the age on his license.” Dell Senior decides to purchase a headstone for his long-dead son, but rather than provide closure to the family and the larger community, it exacerbates existing tensions. While this is a book in which illicit activity takes place with a law enforcement officer at its center, it’s a particularly measured variety of crime fiction—more concerned with the state of its characters’ souls than the legality (or lack thereof) of their actions. While it takes time to build momentum, the novel ultimately arrives at a heart-wrenching place. All the while, the characterization is helped by Thornton’s lean, lyrical prose: “Time stopped again. A pathetic breeze, not cool, lifted the air. He was still in there, still with no light.” The slow start can be frustrating, but the narrative payoff is eminently worthwhile.
At its best, a gripping meditation on betrayals new and old.Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2021
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 288
Publisher: MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
Categories: CRIME & LEGAL THRILLER | THRILLER | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | GENERAL FICTION
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A small-town Mississippi courtroom becomes the setting for a trademark Grisham legal tussle.
Stuart Kofer is not a nice guy. He drinks way too much and likes to brawl. One night, coming home in a foul mood with a blood alcohol count more than triple the legal limit, he breaks his live-in girlfriend’s jaw. He’s done terrible things to her children, too—and now her 16-year-old boy, Drew, puts an end to the terror. Unfortunately for the kid in a place where uniforms are worshipped, Stu was a well-liked cop. “Did it really matter if he was sixteen or sixty? It certainly didn’t matter to Stu Kofer, whose stock seemed to rise by the hour,” writes Grisham of local opinion about giving Drew the benefit of the doubt. Jake Brigance, the hero of the tale, is a lawyer who’s down to his last dime until a fat wrongful-death case is settled. It doesn’t help his bank book when the meaningfully named Judge Omar Noose orders him to defend the kid. Backed by a brilliant paralegal whose dream is to be the first Black female lawyer in the county, he prepares for what the local sheriff correctly portends will be “an ugly trial” that may well land Drew on death row. As ever, Grisham capably covers the mores of his native turf, from gun racks to the casual use of the N-word. As well, he examines Bible Belt attitudes toward abortion and capital punishment as well as the inner workings of the courtroom, such as jury selection: “What will your jury look like?” asks a trial consultant, to which Jake replies, “A regular posse. It’s rural north Mississippi, and I’ll try to change venue to another county simply because of the notoriety.” The story runs on a touch long, as Grisham yarns tend to do, and it gets a bit gory at times, but the level of tension is satisfyingly high all the way to the oddly inconclusive end.
Grisham fans will be pleased, graphic details of evil behavior and all.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-385-54596-9
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020
Categories: CRIME & LEGAL THRILLER | SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE | THRILLER | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE
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A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
Categories: GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE | THRILLER | SUSPENSE | PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER
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