A slow-paced, awkwardly written Christian crime novel.
In this debut novel, Ng tells the story of a group of Canadians connected by a violent incident and their Christian faith.
A murder in the small town of Oshawa, Ontario, goes unsolved for 15 years, but it has unexpected effects on several people’s lives. The victim is a Mafia hit man named Diego Baroffio, originally of New York City, who ends up shot to death after a sketchy deal goes awry in an Oshawa antique furniture store. Detective Keith Kendelhart is a sharp local cop on the case who became a devout Christian after being saved from a near-stabbing in a restaurant. Other characters include Roy Benton, Baroffio’s childhood friend who works at a local department store; and Kiel and Margaret Mendel, two devout Christians involved in the evangelistic efforts of their church. Most central of all is the large Evans family, who owned the furniture store in which Baroffio was killed. Siblings Scott and Kimberly witness the murder, but their sister Miranda is drawn furthest into its aftereffects as she becomes locked in a dynastic struggle for the family’s wealth. Fate comes for sinners and believers alike, but as the mystery unfolds, Ng shows that the way people live their lives has great implications for the way that they meet their deaths. The plot is ambitious in its scope, exploring various subcultures, from that of organized crime to evangelizing Christians. The author uses an omniscient, third-person perspective that isn’t afraid to tip readers off with overt foreshadowing, but odd syntax and grammatical errors often rob the story of its tension: “There were, however, still crimes committed. One, in particular, will soon to meet Margaret Mendel face to face.” The plot is also too convoluted and leisurely for the mystery at the its center to ever feel very urgent—or even terribly mysterious, as the reader witnesses Baroffio’s murder. Much of the rest of the book is made up of digressions from the mystery, often involving Christian themes—but when all the threads finally tie together, they fail to add up to anything satisfying.
A slow-paced, awkwardly written Christian crime novel.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5255-2625-1
Page Count: 318
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2018
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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