A lesson in smart, assured storytelling.
In this supernatural debut, a professor and his team of ghost hunters help restless spirits in an abandoned mental hospital.
Professor Roy Donnelly runs the astrophysics department at Duncan University. Lonely since his wife, Margaret, died two years ago, he finds solace working alongside Brad, his brilliant assistant. Brad, inventor of a special camera called the Blue Viewer, brings the professor with him to an old mine shaft to test the device deep in darkness. Through the viewer, they witness and record the astonishing presence of ghosts—spectral remnants of miners who died in an accident in the 1890s. Brad’s excitement leads him to enlist a young group of supernatural enthusiasts called the Specter Inspectors—Kevin, June and Daniel—to help explore the phenomenon further. They lead Brad and the professor to the Murrydale Regional State Hospital, where a mass murder occurred in the 1950s. There, the group encounters not only a population of ghosts suffering in turmoil, but also their tormentor—a spindly, pitch-black creature that drains spectral energy. After the terrifying incident, the professor and his team have nightmares in which the black creature demands that “Jacob” be handed over. Can the rigorous application of science help bring this mystery figure to light and ease the spirits’ pain? Author E.L.I. writes a love letter to science and the supernatural in this tightly constructed debut. The details of how these spirits exist are as complex as they are lovely; one, for example, appears to be “made of some type of light-blue plastic pressed so thin it is nearly transparent and the hollow center is filled with a milky white fog consisting of little twinkling white lights.” Elsewhere are superficial similarities to the Ghostbusters films, such as the “Recharger” gun and special “Blue View” glasses. But this isn’t really an action story; the narrative is a sweet one, more concerned with reconciling spirituality with the idea that a scientist shouldn’t ever claim to know everything. As the professor says, “[T]he more I learn about the universe, the greater the reality that I know so little about the universe”—a great reminder for children and adults alike.
A lesson in smart, assured storytelling.Pub Date: March 20, 2014
ISBN: 978-1495473340
Page Count: 168
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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