Simon (When Bunnies Go Bad, 2016, etc.), a former Bostonian who once wrote for magazines covering the music scene, kicks off...
A woman obsessed with the Boston rock music scene of 20 years ago discovers that it’s not quite what she remembers.
Forty-something Tara Winton hates her comfortable but dull job in corporate communications, so she jumps at the chance to write a story for Scott Hasseldeck at the slick City magazine, a far cry from the fanzine to which they both contributed back in the day. Tara’s ex-husband, Peter, is still trying to get her to grow up by making suggestions about buying a condo and a better car. But they still have occasional sex, and he’s there for her when she wants an escort to the funeral of Frank Turcotte , a former rocker who gave up booze, found Jesus, and married the love of his life, wild child Neela Johnson. The service brings back plenty of memories for Tara, who’s still close friends with Min, whose affair with Frank ended in an abortion. Whatever plans Frank had for a steady life with Neela ended when Neela fell hard for rising star Chris Crack, lead singer of the Aught Nines, a band about to make it big when Chris died from an overdose. Now, years later, his rival Frank has fallen down the basement stairs to his death, and there are rumors that it was no accident. Tara’s questions about the past apparently upset someone enough to slash all her tires. As she learns more, she realizes how naïve she was and how many undercurrents she missed. Did Chris really die from an accidental overdose, and is his death connected to Frank’s more recent accident?
Simon (When Bunnies Go Bad, 2016, etc.), a former Bostonian who once wrote for magazines covering the music scene, kicks off her Boston Noir series with a fascinating reminiscence of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. But any hint of murder remains a hint right up to the unsatisfying end.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7278-8733-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
A good one in the tough school, in which private detective Marlowe is hired to investigate a blackmailing and finds himself bucking a well-run gang, several murders, and the D A's office. Hard-boiled, fast paced, plenty of action, some sensationalism. Not for conservatives.
Pub Date: Feb. 5, 1938
ISBN: 0394758285
Page Count: 244
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1938
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Looks like Neal Carey, the peripatetic agent of that free- lance justice troop Friends of the Family, will never get back to New York to write his dissertation on Tobias Smollett. This time he's sprung from three years in a Chinese monastery (The Trail to Buddha's Mirror, 1992) only to be sent undercover as a ranch-hand in the Nevada plains to scout out the Sons of Seth, a white- supremacist flock that's his best hope for locating two-year-old Cody McCall, snatched from his Hollywood mother during a paternal weekend. Neal settles in deep, of course, and his ritual ordeals- -having to sell out the rancher who took him in, breaking off his romance with tough schoolmarm Karen Hawley, going up against rotten-apple Cal Strekker, getting ordered to kill his Friendly mentor Joe Graham—are as predictable as the trademark dose of mysticism as the bodies pile up, and as the certainty that when the dust settles, Neal won't be back at school. Winslow's Aryan crazies don't have the threatening solidity of Stephen Greenleaf's (Southern Cross, p. 1102 ), but Neal's latest adventure is full of entertaining derring-do.
Pub Date: Nov. 16, 1993
ISBN: 0-312-09934-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1993
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