Called to the scene of go-go dancer Ronnie Lynn's beating death, Chicago detective Joe Kiley and his partner, Nick Bianco, find a nasty lead: Tony, the boyfriend the victim was slated to meet, has the same name as Tony Touhy, kid brother of North Side mobster Phil Touhy, a silent partner in the club where she worked. Joe and Nick decide to follow up on their own instead of sharing the lead with the not-deeply-interested homicide boys. Joe would've played it a lot differently if he'd known that Nick would get killed during an unauthorized stakeout of Tony Touhy...and if he'd known that Tony didn't really kill Ronnie. By the time he figures out all that, though, it's too late to pull out of his bulldog quest to sink the Touhy brothers—for Nick's murder if not for Ronnie's—even though higher-ups on the force are screaming at him to stop. He gets reassigned to the Bomb and Arson squad (and goes after an inoffensive bomber whose case will tie into Nick's murder in a satisfyingly unexpected way); the one cop who takes his side ends up dead; and he ought to have his hands full between Nick's widow Stella, whom he's long lusted after, and Ronnie's sister Alma, who lusts after him. A gritty handling of all the usual suspects. Jack-of-all- crimes Howard (Love's Blood, 1993, etc.) takes full advantage of the fact that, since his hero isn't a series character, anything could happen to him—right down to the quietly inconclusive ending.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1994
ISBN: 1-883402-39-5
Page Count: 330
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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