by Christopher Buckley ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2018
An entertaining and nicely crafted picaresque thriller with crackling dialogue and a brace of Colonial cops as appealingly...
The political humorist’s second historical novel is a witty bromance about international intrigue and a hunt for two regicides in 17th-century New England.
Buckley (The Relic Master, 2015, etc.) continues a series that began with his previous book’s Baedeker through religious hypocrisy in 16th-century Europe and may have four more installments. Here, he moves to 17th-century New and Old England, jabbing at the Colonies’ Puritan cant, London court intrigue, and libidos in high places. When Samuel Pepys in 1664 seeks a job for his feckless brother-in-law, Balthasar “Balty” de St. Michel, the effort rapidly becomes embroiled in secret plans to spark a war with Holland. Balty receives a royal commission to hunt down two of the judges who signed the death warrant for King Charles I and then fled to New England after Cromwell’s demise. But Balty’s aide-de-camp, a former militia commander named Hiram Huncks, uses the hunt as a cover for his efforts to rally Colonial forces when the British navy arrives to seize New Amsterdam. Balty is amusingly useless at nearly every turn, from seasickness on the Atlantic to tactless posturing among suspicious Colonial officials. Huncks, by contrast, is impressively resourceful and heroic—until Buckley cleverly flips roles and Balty must show his mettle. One subplot has Pepys cast into the Tower of London for peeping at private communiques. Another brings in a Quaker woman who must be rescued by the judge hunters from sadistic New Haven jurists. For those who nodded through classroom history, Buckley provides excellent summaries where needed during the tale and a two-page bibliography as well as asides on the five bastards Charles II had with Lady Castlemaine and their descendants (Diana Spencer, Sarah Ferguson).
An entertaining and nicely crafted picaresque thriller with crackling dialogue and a brace of Colonial cops as appealingly mismatched as any of Hollywood’s buddy efforts.Pub Date: May 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9251-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
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BOOK REVIEW
by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
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by Donna Tartt
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
by John Steinbeck ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 26, 1936
Steinbeck is a genius and an original.
Steinbeck refuses to allow himself to be pigeonholed.
This is as completely different from Tortilla Flat and In Dubious Battle as they are from each other. Only in his complete understanding of the proletarian mentality does he sustain a connecting link though this is assuredly not a "proletarian novel." It is oddly absorbing this picture of the strange friendship between the strong man and the giant with the mind of a not-quite-bright child. Driven from job to job by the failure of the giant child to fit into the social pattern, they finally find in a ranch what they feel their chance to achieve a homely dream they have built. But once again, society defeats them. There's a simplicity, a directness, a poignancy in the story that gives it a singular power, difficult to define. Steinbeck is a genius and an original.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 1936
ISBN: 0140177396
Page Count: 83
Publisher: Covici, Friede
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1936
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by John Steinbeck & edited by Thomas E. Barden
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by John Steinbeck & edited by Robert DeMott
BOOK REVIEW
by John Steinbeck & edited by Susan Shillinglaw & Jackson J. Benson
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