Intriguing and refreshing female characters enliven this mystery tale.
In Willis’ debut thriller, a seemingly meek retirement home resident handles unsavory types by using skills that she picked up during a career as a professional assassin.
In many ways, 84-year-old Hattie Rosales is like other residents at Shady Rest Retirement Home in Gethsemane, Illinois. However, she’s also a former hitwoman who doesn’t actually need the wheeled walker she uses, and when racist resident Dottie Tyler threatens to call Immigration and Customs Enforcement on a Guatemalan Shady Rest employee, Hattie decides to kill her. Periodic bits of backstory reveal that Hattie, as a young wife and mother, met Ludmilla “Milly” Netsurov at a Tupperware party in 1961. The two eventually turned the parties into a business called M&H, but they later earned the bulk of their profits from murder for hire, arranged by a man named Sid. In the present day, Hattie offs two more people, making the deaths look like accidents. This doesn’t stop police chief LaTasha Cranton from poking around Shady Rest. LaTasha recognizes Hattie’s sharp intelligence and accepts her advice on an active homicide case—the shotgun slaying of wealthy businessman Jack Mortensen. However, LaTasha also begins to suspect that Hattie had something to do with the recent Shady Rest demises, leading to a battle of wills between two savvy women. Willis’ novel showcases two multifaceted characters and provides parallels between them; although they’re on opposite sides of the law, Hattie and LaTasha, both people of color, have experienced sexism and racism throughout their lives. They’re also both exceedingly likable. (It helps, of course, that the people whom Hattie kills at Shady Rest aren’t remotely sympathetic.) Startling moments arise naturally, as in a scene in which Hattie cleans out a safe deposit box that’s filled with goodies from her former profession. Various mysteries creep into the narrative, involving the Mortensen investigation and Milly’s unexplained death years ago. The latter case is easy to figure out, but the book’s overall resolution offers a pleasant surprise.
Intriguing and refreshing female characters enliven this mystery tale.Pub Date: April 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-977209-25-2
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Outskirts Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
