A welcome new approach to the small-town legal thriller.
Gersh (Art Is Dead, 2006), a former attorney, charmingly lampoons his one-time profession in this lighthearted legal thriller.
A. James Emerson “Jimmy” Harris is an alcoholic, sketchy lawyer who gave up defending drug dealers in the city of San Buenasera, California, to go into practice in a small coastal California town. He’s no Perry Mason; his paralegal, Clyde, handles all legal matters for him, while his partner, Karen, does his analytical thinking. Instead, the wisecracking, self-deprecating Jimmy reacts impulsively when opportunity arises. So when Janet Mason, star of the recent television show Desperate Shop Girls, walks into his office wanting to divorce her developer husband and put a stop to his current project, Jimmy doesn’t think too deeply about it. But Karen does: “But why would she want to stop the development? It’s part of the community estate. She’ll lose half the money.” Mix in a vengeful mortician, a stern FBI agent, and a threatening, mob-connected union boss, and Gersh has all the makings for a wonderfully convoluted mystery. The author skillfully blends his narrator’s internal monologue and his sarcastic dialogue with others to propel the narrative along. Take, for example, this explanation of Jimmy’s ethics: “I’m an attorney. I’ve humbly bent the knee of fealty to my lord client. I’ve attorned. Get it? Attorney, attorned.” The author also sketches colorful characters, as seen by his snarky protagonist; here’s Jimmy’s take on the local police chief: “When he was a patrolman, the town had been beset by the scourge of jaywalking. He was assigned to a task force to stamp it out. It was that success that got him his job as our Chief of Police.” Confused Jimmy is so busy going down his own rabbit holes that readers will likely figure out whodunit and why long before he does. However, the way that Gersh guides Jimmy to the case’s conclusion is what makes this novel so enjoyable.
A welcome new approach to the small-town legal thriller.Pub Date: March 26, 2015
ISBN: 978-0692389218
Page Count: 314
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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