In the first volume of this California-based mystery series, middle-aged rookie cop Dylan Blake gets pulled into a murder case that recalls his own painful past.
Forty-something Blake is enjoying some time alone in nature in Big Sur when he receives a call from Chief Cooper, his top boss back at the Sierra Springs Police Department. Kate Winslow, a local businesswoman and ex-wife and sister to rich men, is concerned about the car accident that took the life of Jack Hamilton, the business partner she just fired. Since Hamilton’s car went over a cliff near where Blake is vacationing, Cooper asks Blake to scope out the crash scene. On his climb up after completing this task, Blake is nearly killed by someone throwing rocks from above. While local police initially dismiss Hamilton’s death as a suicide, Blake continues to investigate, soon meeting up with the alluring Kate, her sleazy ex-husband, and their 20-something daughter, Allison, who is living on her own and working as a prostitute. Blake senses that the Winslows are dealing with issues similar to those faced by his own family, which led to his depression and divorce; he got back on track only recently when he joined the force. When Kate’s ex-husband shows up dead, events escalate, putting Blake’s life once again in jeopardy. Kate’s brother in Utah rises up as a nemesis, and even Blake’s mother in Georgia gets threatened before there’s a resolution of sorts to the murky case. First-time novelist Babka weaves a multilayered tale that has shades of California noir à la Chinatown. Blake’s desire for connection as well as escape through nature is affectingly portrayed, and his interactions with the damaged Allison are particularly touching. However, Babka’s narrative occasionally gets bogged down in his protagonist’s back story, his various tics (e.g., trying to eat healthy) and key relationships, including those with a new girlfriend and a local African-American boy. Still, there’s rich material to mine in this strong start to a new series.
Accomplished, ambitious crime fiction launching a sensitive, complex hero and a promising array of supporting characters.
Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-9910601-2-2
Page Count: 382
Publisher: Blue Squirrel Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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