An imposing, unforgettable modern take on the classic detective story.
In Musial’s debut thriller, a former Army Ranger working at a pool hall turns detective when he becomes a person of interest in a murder investigation.
Max Deacon is just a guy earning his keep at Dougie’s Pool Hall in Chicago. But his scuffle with a few goons impresses Luna Del Playa so much that she asks for his help. Apparently, Luna and her gal pals at Mellon’s Bar and Grill are being sexually harassed by their boss. Max stops by the restaurant and roughs up Marky Sanchez, but a few weeks later, Marky gets a bullet in the head and another in the chest. Cops take an immediate interest in Max, who goes about trying to clear his name. He can’t decide between suspects Praxibus Sanchez (Marky’s gangster father) and Hector, a bookie to whom Marky owed a hefty debt. It seems Max is on the right track when someone shows up at his apartment to kill him. Now Max needs all the support he can get, and luckily he’s got boss Dougie, Army buddy Moose, and cop brother Stan on his side. Author Musial deftly complements the contemporary setting with a traditional detective story: a night owl who often works the late shift, Max smells like cigarettes from the pool room (even though it’s illegal to smoke in there), and his dark past, which includes time in Iraq, leads to PTSD and recurring nightmares. Max’s friends and colleagues are a winsome, motley bunch, even Dougie’s day-shift employee Wally, who speaks broken English with a thick Polish accent. The ladies are unfortunately not as engaging; they’re predominantly eye candy for the men. Max starts a (mostly physical) relationship with Mellon’s bartender Gwen, but she’s interchangeable with any of the other female characters, from Luna to Max’s co-worker Sharon. Musial, however, loads his story with shocking moments, including a torture scene that redefines the word pincushion. There’s also tough-guy dialogue with a delicate sprinkling of humor: a beaten and bloody Max blames his condition on a door-to-door salesman—“gave me the hard sell on a set of steak knives.” This could conceivably—and hopefully—be the first in a series to feature the unseasoned but capable gumshoe.
An imposing, unforgettable modern take on the classic detective story.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tour de force.
In 1974, a troubled Vietnam vet inherits a house from a fallen comrade and moves his family to Alaska.
After years as a prisoner of war, Ernt Allbright returned home to his wife, Cora, and daughter, Leni, a violent, difficult, restless man. The family moved so frequently that 13-year-old Leni went to five schools in four years. But when they move to Alaska, still very wild and sparsely populated, Ernt finds a landscape as raw as he is. As Leni soon realizes, “Everyone up here had two stories: the life before and the life now. If you wanted to pray to a weirdo god or live in a school bus or marry a goose, no one in Alaska was going to say crap to you.” There are many great things about this book—one of them is its constant stream of memorably formulated insights about Alaska. Another key example is delivered by Large Marge, a former prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who now runs the general store for the community of around 30 brave souls who live in Kaneq year-round. As she cautions the Allbrights, “Alaska herself can be Sleeping Beauty one minute and a bitch with a sawed-off shotgun the next. There’s a saying: Up here you can make one mistake. The second one will kill you.” Hannah’s (The Nightingale, 2015, etc.) follow-up to her series of blockbuster bestsellers will thrill her fans with its combination of Greek tragedy, Romeo and Juliet–like coming-of-age story, and domestic potboiler. She re-creates in magical detail the lives of Alaska's homesteaders in both of the state's seasons (they really only have two) and is just as specific and authentic in her depiction of the spiritual wounds of post-Vietnam America.
A tour de force.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-312-57723-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
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
© 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.
