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THE SKY FISHERMAN

Name: THE SKY FISHERMAN
Author: Craig Lesley
ISBN: 0-395-67724-6

by Craig Lesley ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 22, 1995

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A small-screen epic novel of the outdoor life in the Pacific Northwest: overly melodramatic but authentic in its details of male exploits, small-town intrigues, and a fatherless teenage boy's search for a path in life. Lesley's (River Song, 1989, etc.) story opens as Culver, the boy narrator, along with his mother and stepfather, comes down another rung in life, moving to a house along a siding in the middle of nowhere. It's the last straw for Culver's mother, who uproots Culver and takes him back to the lumber town where he was born and where his father, Dave, died shooting the rapids of the Lost River. Uncle Jake, who was along that day and now runs a guide service, is more than willing to become a surrogate father to Culver. What follows is highly reminiscent of Sometimes a Great Notion and A River Runs Through It, where fishing trips alternate with scenes describing the uneasy relations between white and Native American communities as the lumber mills begin to fail. The author leaves no potential plot twist unturned as he throws Culver into rapids-running, Native American mysticism, a series of forest fires (some of which may have been set by the jilted stepfather), the murder of a Native American, a fire that devours the mill and half the town, a hint that Uncle Jake is his father, and, as a final tie-up-all-the-threads extravaganza, a giant flood that ends with Jake's death. Does Culver grow up? You bet: Not only does he confront his mother to get the full story of his father's death, but he forgives her and even makes peace with his mother's suitor, the dentist Franklin. Earnest, a little too nice, but ultimately persuasive: This is being touted as Lesley's breakthrough bookand it may go far. (Author tour)

Pub Date: Aug. 22, 1995

ISBN: 0-395-67724-6

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1995

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE POET

by Michael Connelly ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 15, 1996

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Connelly takes a break from his Harry Bosch police novels (The Last Coyote, p. 328, etc.) for something even more intense: a reporter's single-minded pursuit of the serial killer who murdered his twin. Even his buddies in the Denver PD thought Sean McEvoy's shooting in the backseat of his car looked like a classic cop suicide, right clown to the motive: his despondency over his failure to clear the murder of a University of Denver student. But as Sean's twin brother, Jack, of the Rocky Mountain News, notices tiny clues that marked Sean's death as murder, his suspicions about the dying message Sean scrawled inside his fogged windshield—"Out of space. Out of time"—alert him to a series of eerily similar killings stretching from Sarasota to Albuquerque. The pattern, Jack realizes, involves two sets of murders: a series of sex killings of children, and then the executions (duly camouflaged as suicides) of the investigating police officers. Armed with what he's dug up, Jack heads off to Washington, to the Law Enforcement Foundation and the FBI. The real fireworks begin as Jack trades his official silence for an inside role in the investigation, only to find himself shut out of both the case and the story. From then on in, Jack, falling hard for Rachel Walling, the FBI agent in charge of the case, rides his Bureau connections like a bucking bronco—even as one William Gladden, a pedophile picked up on a low-level charge in Santa Monica, schemes to make bail before the police can run his prints through the national computer, then waits with sick patience for his chance at his next victim. The long-awaited confrontation between Jack and Gladden comes at an LA video store; but even afterward, Jack's left with devastating questions about the case. Connelly wrings suspense out of every possible aspect of Jack's obsessive hunt for his brother's killer. Prepare to be played like a violin.

Pub Date: Jan. 15, 1996

ISBN: 0-316-15398-2

Page Count: 440

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1995

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
NIGHTSHADE
by Michael Connelly

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WAITING
by Michael Connelly

- BOOK REVIEW
RESURRECTION WALK
by Michael Connelly

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EVA LUNA

by Isabel Allende ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 21, 1988

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Here, after last year's Of Love and Shadows, the tale of a quirky young woman's rise to influence in an unnamed South American country—with a delightful cast of exotic characters, but without the sure-handed plotting and leisurely grace of Allende's first—and best—book, The House of the Spirits (1985). When little Eva Luna's mother dies, the imaginative child is hired out to a string of eccentric families. During one of her periodic bouts of rebellion, she runs away and makes friends with Huberto Naranjo, a slick little street-kid. Years later, when she's in another bind, he finds her a place to stay in the red-light district—with a cheerful madame, La Senora, whose best friend is Melesio, a transvestite cabaret star. Everything's cozy until a new police sergeant takes over the district and disrupts the accepted system of corruption. Melesio drafts a protesting petition and is packed off to prison, and Eva's out on the street. She meets Riad Halabi, a kind Arab merchant with a cleft lip, who takes pity on her and whisks her away to the backwater village of Agua Santa. There, Eva keeps her savior's sulky wife Zulema company. Zulema commits suicide after a failed extramarital romance, and the previously loyal visitors begin to whisper about the relationship between Riad Halabi and Eva. So Eva departs for the capital—where she meets up with Melesio (now known as Mimi), begins an affair with Huberto Naranjo (now a famous rebel leader), and becomes casually involved in the revolutionary movement. Brimming with hothouse color, amply displayed in Allende's mellifluous prose, but the riot of character and incident here is surface effect; and the action—the mishaps of Eva—is toothless and vague. Lively entertainment, then, with little resonance.