A high-quality murder mystery with a labyrinthine plot and a memorable heroine.
In Little’s debut thriller, a small-town Connecticut cop investigates a series of murders that she suspects may have been committed by her missing spouse.
Officer Emma Thorne has been dealing with her husband Will Foster’s severe depression. Will, a Yale University professor, hasn’t taught a class in months and has hinted that he’s contemplating suicide. One day, Emma returns home to find that he’s inexplicably disappeared, leaving his wallet, identification, and cellphone behind. A search, with help from fellow officers, turns up nothing. After accepting the job of police chief—a position vacated after her father’s unexpected death—Emma hires private investigator Mark Byrne to focus on locating Will. Emma, meanwhile, is busy with a murder case; a guy whom she dated back in high school initially seems to be a suicide until Emma, working with a forensic pathologist, uncovers foul play. After more bodies are found that are clearly homicides, cops dub the killer “Mr. Sharpie,” as each victim is marked with a letter or number, written in ink. A cryptic text leads Emma to believe that Will is alive, and evidence from murder scenes seems to implicate him in the killings. It seems that all the victims have ties to Emma, so there’s a good chance she may become a suspect, as well—or the next victim. Little’s gleefully convoluted mystery has a first-rate protagonist for a prospective series. Over the course of the story, Emma valiantly deals with a lecherous mayor and uncooperative cops who resent her role as chief. Although many secondary characters show deviousness, Emma’s police dog, Pepper, is refreshingly loyal and reliable. The story features plenty of violence, including brutal homicides and meticulous examination of the corpses. Even the humor is dark, although it’s delivered well; in one scene, for instance, Emma gets rid of an annoying woman who’s fawning over the easygoing Pepper by saying, “I wouldn’t get near her if I were you. She’s vicious.” Intermittent scenes from the killer’s perspective will put readers ahead of the investigators, but that doesn’t make the tale any less nerve-wracking.
A high-quality murder mystery with a labyrinthine plot and a memorable heroine.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-73397-380-9
Page Count: 379
Publisher: Honeysuckle Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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