As one character notes of Paul’s reporting, it’s “the best kind of mystery."
The discovery and disappearance of a young woman’s body upends the interconnected lives of the Hamptons’ residents.
Kozatch’s debut novel has the same intriguing elements that made Big Little Lies a propulsive page-turner and compulsively watchable miniseries—a glamorous setting, a dead body, and the deliberately paced reveal about how it got that way. Also included are characters up and down the cultural and financial spectrum whose lives are impacted by the tragedy. The story kicks off when a lone surfer makes a disturbing discovery on the beach: “It wasn’t a rich kid’s kite. It was a girl and she was dead.” Paul Sandis, a transplanted New York City journalist who now toils on a local paper, hears about the body on his police scanner. But when he arrives at the beach to investigate, he is told there is no body and that it was just a “drill.” The truth surfaces when Paul comes across a viral photo of the victim. Paul is in the process of finalizing his divorce from Jeanine, who is not only engaged, but pregnant. Other memorably drawn characters include Merika, a Shinnecock Indian who may have seen something on the beach; Butch, Jeanine’s fiance, a financially challenged real estate developer; Will Clifford, the officer who initially called in the body; Peter Draken, a law student from a privileged and controlling family; and Maria, the victim herself, whose story unfolds posthumously in intermittent chapters. All of the characters seem to have juicy secrets or carry the burden of past indiscretions. There’s illicit drug usage, infidelity, and bigotry. Kozatch maps out the tony territory (“Main Street was now dominated by luxury brand satellites that wanted to be able to advertise ‘East Hampton’ on the side of a drawstring shopping bag”) as well as “neighborhoods you were unlikely to find on tourist postcards.” He effectively doles out information that serves to flesh out the characters. Jeanine and Butch, for example, go way back (“They were…in high school again, all eyes in the cafeteria on them”).
As one character notes of Paul’s reporting, it’s “the best kind of mystery."Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9987968-2-6
Page Count: 402
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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