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A TWINKLE IN THE EYES OF GOD

Name: A TWINKLE IN THE EYES OF GOD
Author: David William Pearce
ISBN: 978-1-68433-413-1

From the Monk Buttman Mystery series , Vol. 2

by David William Pearce ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 9, 2020

A measured but engrossing story overloaded with religious discourse.

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Helping his daughter track down her missing husband, a California man revisits his complicated past in Pearce’s (Where Fools Dare To Tread, 2019) second installment of his thriller series.

Monk Buttman has strained relationships with multiple family members, including his nearly 30-year-old daughter, Rebekah. So he’s surprised when she calls him, concerned about her husband, Farrell. Monk flies to Virginia with his girlfriend, Agnes, and quickly learns that Farrell is gone. Evidently, he wanted to join a mysterious church. The father-and-daughter team learn that a couple of congregation members who had wanted to leave committed suicide. Rebekah questions their deaths and cryptically mentions someone called “the Angel,” who may have scared Farrell into fleeing. Monk’s search for Farrell leads him, Agnes, and Rebekah west through various states. Along the way, Monk encounters some of his estranged family: his religious mother; his commune-running father; and his ex-wife (and Rebekah’s mom), Astral. The trip ultimately prompts scrutiny—primarily from Rebekah—about Monk’s Christian faith, or lack thereof. As the hunt for Farrell continues, it turns dangerous. Ties to a murder-suicide lead to more homicides and threats against Monk, Agnes, and Rebekah. Pearce proficiently manages abundant characters, whose relationships anchor the story. They often argue at length about religion, which has the unfortunate effect of sidelining the storytelling. These recurrent discussions, however, astutely connect Monk’s past with his current task of finding Farrell. The flawed hero earns some points by admitting his mistakes. His disloyalty to Agnes, however, makes him nearly unlikable. There’s not much on the mystery front, and when Monk stumbles upon several bodies, he remains peculiarly blasé. Nevertheless, the thriller conveys a general sense of dread, as readers know from the opening scene, that one character is doomed.

A measured but engrossing story overloaded with religious discourse.

Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-68433-413-1

Page Count: 250

Publisher: Black Rose Writing

Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2020

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

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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.