A generally engaging labor of love with details that truly immerse readers in its characters’ work.
In Rowan's short novel, a young logger recalls a past murder and a search for answers.
Ed “Knucklehead” Knockle is an angry young man and a fighter who decides, in 1975, to take a job at the logging outfit where his father died in a mysterious accident, before Ed was born. (The book consists of Ed’s recording of these happenings a quarter-century later while on a trip back to the Olympic Peninsula.) His first day on the job, Ed becomes bunkmates with Bob Smith, another newbie, a huge, taciturn Iowan. Readers meet other characters, such as Crank, the boss, and, later, a scary hooktender named Spike Larue. Readers also get a glimpse of a daily grind that would break most men. Ed and Bob survive their first week, though, and become true loggers and fast friends. Then comes new secretary Ruby Faulk; she and Ed become friends, and she and Bob become lovers; later, she breaks it off with Bob, who’s devastated. After a Thanksgiving break, the men come back to camp, where Ruby’s found stabbed to death, and Spike’s knife, which he often flaunted, is found beside her body. A dramatic and scary climax leads to a resolution of the mysteries surrounding Ruby as well as Ed’s father. Rowan was himself a logger on the peninsula for almost a decade, so he clearly knows the life in his bones. He immerses readers in the logger vocabulary (tailhold, choker, skyline, crummy, yarder, gut-hammer), and each chapter begins with an uncredited pen-and-ink sketch showing a scene from the logging life. It’s effectively revealed to be a hard, dangerous, dirty, and ill-paid existence, but it’s also one in which these skilled men take pride, as it’s evident that most guys would not last a day in their shoes. Overall, the plot is largely believable except for a final twist that many readers may find gratuitous.
A generally engaging labor of love with details that truly immerse readers in its characters’ work.Pub Date: June 18, 2020
ISBN: 9781087905099
Page Count: 193
Publisher: Cirque Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Fast-moving excitement with a satisfying finish.
The feds must protect an accused criminal and an orphaned girl.
Maybe you’ve met him before as protagonist of The 6:20 Man (2022): Ex-Army Ranger Travis Devine, who’d had the dubious fortune to tangle with “the girl on the train,” is now assigned by his homeland security boss to protect Danny Glass, who's awaiting trial on multiple RICO charges in Washington state. Devine has what it takes: He “was a closer, snooper, fixer, investigator,” and, when necessary, a killer. These skills are on full display as the deaths of three key witnesses grind justice to a temporary halt. Glass has a 12-year-old niece, Betsy Odom, and each is the other’s only living relative—her parents recently died of an apparent drug overdose. The FBI has temporary guardianship of Betsy, who's a handful. She tells Travis that though she’s not yet 13, she's 28 in “life-shit years.” The financially well-heeled Glass wants to be her legal guardian with an eye to eventual adoption, but what are his real motives? And what happens to her if he's convicted? Meanwhile, Betsy insists that her parents never touched drugs, and she begs Travis to find out how they really died. This becomes part of a mission that oozes danger. The small town of Ricketts has a woman mayor who’s full of charm on the surface, but deeply corrupt and deadly when crossed. She may be linked to a subversive group called "12/24/65," as in 1865, when the Ku Klux Klan beast was born. Blood flows, bombs explode, and people perish, both good guys and not-so-good guys. Readers might ponder why in fiction as well as in life, it sometimes seems necessary for many to die so one may live. And what about the girl on the train? She's not necessary to the plot, but she's a fun addition as she pops in and out of the pages, occasionally leaving notes for Travis. Maybe she still wants him dead.
Fast-moving excitement with a satisfying finish.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781538757901
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
One of those rare triple-deckers that’s actually worth every page, every complication, every bead of sweat.
A routine break-in at the home of Sûreté homicide chief Armand Gamache leads slowly but surely to the revelation of a potentially calamitous threat to all Québec.
At first it seems as if nothing at all triggered the burglar alarm at Gamache’s home in Three Pines; it was literally a false alarm. It’s not till he receives a package containing his summer jacket that Gamache realizes someone really did get into his house, choosing to steal exactly this one item and return it with a cryptic note referring to “some malady…water” and “Angelica stems.” Having already refused to meet with Jeanne Caron, chief of staff to Marcus Lauzon, a powerful politician who’s already taken vengeance on Gamache and his family for not expunging his child’s criminal record, Gamache now agrees to meet with Charles Langlois, a marine biologist with ties to Caron who confesses to a leading role in stealing Gamache’s jacket. Their meeting ends inconclusively for Gamache, who’s convinced that Langlois is hiding something weighty, and all too conclusively for Langlois, who’s killed by a hit-and-run driver as he leaves. The news that Langlois had been investigating a water supply near the abbey of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups sends Gamache scurrying off to the abbey, where the plot steadily thickens until he’s led to ask how “an old recipe for Chartreuse” can possibly be connected to “a terrorist plot to poison Québec’s drinking water.” That’s a great question, and answering it will take the second half of this story, which spins ever more intricate connections among leading players that become deeply unsettling.
One of those rare triple-deckers that’s actually worth every page, every complication, every bead of sweat.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2024
ISBN: 9781250328137
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
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