Wimberley turns from mysteries (A Rock and a Hard Place, 1999, etc.) to mainstream fiction with fine results: characters to...
A moving, deeply felt story about fathers and sons, sin and redemption.
Florida’s timberlands in 1929—the setting for Tink Buchanan’s mythic struggle to recover land that once belonged to his family—now belongs to the Ogilvies, who live in the house Tink was born in. Every dollar, every nickel and dime Tink earns working his sawmill goes into the recovery fund. The focus is total, the effort unremitting. To ten-year-old Carter, his father is a figure both frightening and magnetic. Carter has seen Tink kill unhesitatingly, seen him administer the kind of eye-for-an-eye justice only possible when a man’s sense of himself borders on the divine. And yet Carter has also seen kindness emanating from his father, acts of unexpected generosity directed not only at him but at others—impoverished and beleaguered blacks, for instance, victims of the rampant racism endemic to that time and place. Carter, now grown and working for the county, loves his father, but he wants no part of his land mania. The distance between them widens even more when Julia becomes a factor—the Ogilvie daughter who cares as little about territoriality as Carter does. He hungers for her, is desperate to marry her, but the obstacles are daunting. Dave Ogilvie and Tink Buchanan are hard men, and there’s no discharge for anyone in their long, grim war. Before it’s resolved violent crimes are committed, good people die tragically, and Carter has to face the bitter implications of his own weakness. And then find the strength to forgive himself.
Wimberley turns from mysteries (A Rock and a Hard Place, 1999, etc.) to mainstream fiction with fine results: characters to empathize with, and the kind of solid, no-nonsense storytelling altogether too rare these days.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2000
ISBN: 1-878448-04-8
Page Count: 350
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2000
This is secondhand tough-guy stuff, memorable only in that it feels like you've read it all before.
A former mob enforcer–turned–private eye is called in to investigate the savage murder of a Mafia leg-breaker in New York's Hudson Valley and finds himself on the trail of corporate espionage and a serial killer long believed dead.
The second book in Barron's series featuring Isaiah Coleridge (Blood Standard, 2018) seems, more than the debut, an obvious attempt to establish Coleridge as a strongman smartass in the Jack Reacher mold. The fight scenes are the written equivalent of action-movie choreography but without suspense, because the setup—Isaiah being constantly outnumbered—is so clearly a prelude for the no-sweat beat downs he doles out to the various thugs who get in his way. There's nary a memorable wisecrack in the entire book. What does stick in the mind are the sections that go out of their way to be writerly. It's not enough to say that it was a starry night in the Alaskan wilderness. Coleridge (the name is a clue to the series' literary aspirations) says, "I could've read a book by the cascading illumination of the stars." A later flash of insight is conveyed by "The scalpel of grim epiphany sliced into my consciousness." What with the narrative that spreads like spider cracks in glass and the far-too-frequent flashbacks to the man who was Coleridge's mentor, you might wish another scalpel had made its way through the manuscript.
This is secondhand tough-guy stuff, memorable only in that it feels like you've read it all before.Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7352-1289-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A proficient but routine thriller in which you can tell for miles in advance who’s disposable and who’s slated for survival,...
The past comes knocking for a former stripper who thought she’d said goodbye to all that in an altogether less-successful distaff reworking of The Innocent (2005).
In some ways, the life Megan Pierce left behind when she stopped giving lap dances and calling herself Cassie was perfect: exciting, glamorous and anything but routine. If only her abusive client Stewart Green hadn’t vanished under circumstances that strongly suggested a violent end, Megan would never have taken a powder, ultimately trading Atlantic City’s La Crème nightclub for the American dream with a lawyer husband, two perfect children and every appliance of the upscale suburban lifestyle. One day, however, Megan—motivated solely, it seems, by the need to kick-start the plot—decides to drop in at La Crème. Her sudden reappearance, together with her old colleague Lorraine Griggs’ sighting of somebody who looks a lot like Stewart and the remarkably similar disappearance exactly 17 years later of construction heir Carlton Flynn, sets in motion a new chain of violence and threatens to reveal all of Megan’s carefully hidden secrets. Eventually she reconnects with her old flame Ray Levine, a photographer who has hit the skids big time, and tells what she knows to Det. Broome of Atlantic City Homicide. But both men’s most protective instincts are challenged by a pair of wholesome killers calling themselves Barbie and Ken—and by the fact that Broome’s own boss is working against him.
A proficient but routine thriller in which you can tell for miles in advance who’s disposable and who’s slated for survival, marked by the virtual absence of the baroque plot twists fans of Coben (Live Wire, 2011, etc.) expect as their due.Pub Date: March 20, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-525-95227-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2012
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