A winning twin spin that combines an ethical conundrum with a police procedural.
Two brothers are connected to a murder—in divergent ways—in this novel.
At the beginning of Random’s (Defying Gravity, 2016) tale, there’s a body, a weapon, an eyewitness, and a confession. Harvard psychology professor Olek Janko died in his apartment from knife wounds inflicted by Gary Vaughn. Gary confesses to the homicide, which his brother, Maynard, witnessed and reported to the authorities. What veteran Police Lt. Joe “The Bull” Antonelli thinks will be a clear-cut case turns bizarre when “attractive and ambiguously ethnic” Detective Cassandra “Cassie” Navarro reveals that the Vaughn boys share a connection more profound that brotherhood: they are conjoined twins. Maynard is a soft-spoken, articulate, and presumed innocent witness to a murder, and Gary is the coldblooded killer. The Vaughns, joined at the abdomen, had been part of a twin study Janko was conducting; now Antonelli summarizes: “We have a confessed murderer, but we have an apparently innocent man attached to him.” Courtroom scenes present a riveting debate as to the degree that conjoined twins can be independent—is it just a physical condition, or if one twin has a mind to kill, how involved psychologically is the other in that decision? And if he can’t be punished without penalizing Maynard, did Gary commit the perfect crime? During their investigation, Antonelli and Cassie interview Janko’s estranged wife and former research assistant, Christina Cole, who seems more concerned with the twins than with her dead husband. The story moves quickly, and Random is able to craft a plot that sounds far-fetched on the surface but becomes poignantly believable. Descriptions are rich: “A black sky salted with stars” and “The brothers were looking in two different directions at once—like a lizard whose eyes work independently of each other.” Smart dialogue fills quick-paced scenes, and accounts of Boston’s North End are vivid (cannoli, anyone?). Strong women and players of various ethnicities fill the pages. Lead character Antonelli is a bit of a sexagenarian dandy, with his hand-tailored suits and gold-embossed cuff links.
A winning twin spin that combines an ethical conundrum with a police procedural.Pub Date: March 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63524-846-3
Page Count: -
Publisher: LitFire Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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