by Dewey B. Reynolds ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 13, 2017
An unevenly executed novel but one that brings its smoke-filled milieu to life.
A fictionalized account of the author’s parents’ lives in Kansas City, Missouri, criminal underworld of the 1960s.
After growing up in foster care, author Reynolds (Brush Creek Charlie, 2015, etc.) discovered that his biological parents were career criminals. This startling revelation inspired him to dive into their history, resulting in this unusual book, which aims for James Ellroy–esque true-crime heights but ultimately settles for overheated pulp. According to this account, Reynolds’ parents, Gordon McCoyd “Mack” Reynolds, who was white, and Alla Mae Briggs, who was African-American, met when she was plying her trade as a street prostitute. Combining their talents, they went into business running a “bawdy house” in Kansas City’s red-light district: “I’m a good judge of character,” Mack tells Alla in this text. “My heart, my mind, my soul, my spirit—they tell me that I can trust you.” Kansas City was a key moneymaker for the Chicago Mafia, and Reynolds deftly captures the city’s colorful characters and their smoke-filled haunts: William “Willie the Rat” Cammisano reputedly “had stolen everything, from the wheels of a truck to the rings off a woman’s fingers,” the author writes, and even when “Godfather of the Black Mafia” James “Doc” Dearborn smiled, “it appeared as though he was still very angry about something.” Reynolds says he had access to extensive police records, but rather than take a reportorial approach, he embellishes the narrative with invented, often stilted dialogue: “We’ve been with Mack for quite some time,” one woman says as she’s being tortured. Reynolds portrays his main characters, an interracial couple, as crossing racial lines, but the fact that they encounter brutal racists nearly everywhere they go strains credulity. He gives credit to Mack for showing “compassion for the coloreds,” as Mack puts it, but the character’s fundamental, and extremely unsympathetic, personality trait is to express sadistic fury at almost every turn. There are scenes of violence that would make Quentin Tarantino blanch and also explicit sex scenes, as when a prostitute and her client are transported to “an orgasmic fairyland.”
An unevenly executed novel but one that brings its smoke-filled milieu to life.Pub Date: April 13, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5450-8887-6
Page Count: 374
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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