A solid, engaging mystery with a timely plot.
The second novel in Van Soest’s (At The Center, 2015, etc.) Sylvia Jensen Mystery Series reunites the recently former social worker with Native American investigative reporter J.B. Harrell, setting them on a quest to uncover the truth about the disappearance of a young boy in the Bronx almost four decades ago.
It’s 2006, and Sylvia and J.B. stop at a coffee shop after a rally at Monrow City Hall. The Midwestern city is considering turning over their public education system to the CSCH corporation, a for-profit company that runs charter schools around the country. Browsing through the New York Times, Sylvia learns of the discovery of the remains of a young boy in the debris of demolished Bronx public school P.S. 457. CSCH is planning to build a charter school on the site. Sylvia taught at that school for two years, and during the long teachers strike of 1968, one of her third-grade students, Markus LeMeur, went missing. In her mid-20s, Sylvia and her then-husband, Frank Waters, had moved from the Midwest to the Bronx. Idealistic and enthusiastic, she developed a special relationship with Markus and his older sister, Mentayer. Now she is convinced the body is that of little Markus, and she thinks she knows who killed him. She and J.B. fly east, he to investigate CSCH charter schools, she to get justice for Markus. Sylvia narrates the story, which is a combination of the duo’s present-day probes into Markus’ death and possible corruption in CSCH and Sylvia’s painful confrontation with the past, a time during which she began asserting her emerging feminism and her marriage was beginning to crumble. Van Soest is a skilled writer, equally adept with dialogue and narrative. She smoothly alternates the settings between 1967-68 and 2006, letting the past gradually unfold to meet the present. And Sylvia is a passionate, albeit sometimes overwrought, protagonist. The author vividly re-creates a tumultuous slice of history, although the anti-union slant is a less-than-evenhanded presentation of the issues.
A solid, engaging mystery with a timely plot.Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-62720-197-1
Page Count: 254
Publisher: Apprentice House
Review Posted Online: July 11, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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