A mystery that aptly covers two time periods, fronted by an offbeat protagonist.
In this debut thriller, an inspector’s dual murder cases may be connected to an unidentified serial killer’s spree from 20 years ago.
Just days away from Christmas in 2009, Inspector Andrea Pantaleo of the murder squad in Bari, Italy, has two new cases on his desk. One is the mutilated body of an unknown woman, with indications of torture and rape; the other is a gangland-style shooting of three men. In the novel’s concurrent plot, events beginning in 1960 ultimately lead to the 1988 investigation of the murder of Marta Villoresi in Genoa. Inspector Gianrico Salvemini works this case, which involves two key pieces of evidence the killer has intentionally left behind: a cassette tape and a two-word anagram. The tape contains audio of Marta’s brutal murder, ending with the soundtrack to the 1975 Italian horror film Profondo Rosso (Deep Red). Salvemini pinpoints and arrests a suspect, but a second homicide, with another tape and the same anagram, could mean he has the wrong man. More murders ensue and, though they eventually stop, remain unsolved by 2009. Pantaleo, however, has evidence that links his two cases with Marta’s murder by the ’88 serial killer, who may once again be active. Originally published in Italian, Calabrese’s series opener introduces a curious inspector who appears in later volumes. Short-tempered Pantaleo is unlikable, physically assaulting a parking attendant with little provocation. But there’s a softer side, as he fawns over his grandmother, who raised him until he was 10 years old (when her health deteriorated). The engrossing 1988 plot, at over a third of the book’s length, is fully fleshed out, meticulously following Salvemini’s investigation. Descriptions of murders from both eras—a victim’s perspective as well as forensics examinations—are graphic and harrowing. This may be due to Thompson’s translation: The English-language prose, though comprehensible, is unadorned and cold. Despite Pantaleo’s affinity for Sherlock Holmes, the inspector reaches a solution primarily through fortuity and others finding links between the cases.
A mystery that aptly covers two time periods, fronted by an offbeat protagonist.Pub Date: Dec. 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-973529-19-4
Page Count: 299
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: July 9, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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