A chilling, and unfortunately timely, commentary on the dangers of demonizing the other.
Social and political turbulence in the 1930s sets the stage for murder in this debut historical thriller.
In a small New York town, society heiress Lana Whitlow remains stuck at home, caring for her ailing father while pondering her sister Sarah’s insanity and subsequent committal to an asylum. Of equal concern to Lana is her father, who is espousing support for Hitler’s hostile actions in Europe, and her social circle, which is also embracing the racist and nativist platform of the eugenics movement. Sarah, who is locked up on Blackwell’s Island, is being treated with questionable techniques while family friend and psychoanalyst Alan Sherrod pushes for a more humane and effective medical approach. Intersecting their lives is Sean Kane, a railroad detective on the trail of a murderer who dismembers his victims and leaves them on the tracks. Kane is certain the victims aren’t just hobos, and his instinct is correct. The killings are a link to a larger story involving societal scandals, political machinations, and the inhumane treatment of the poor and unwell. With America in the throes of the Depression and worried about a world war, Lana and Sean play witness to a society that turns toward science and the occult for solutions to death and misfortune. Odin’s narrative is disturbing in its portrayal of a history that is not so far behind readers. He paints a particularly bleak picture of mental health care in the ’30s, bringing to light treatments and experiments that are the stuff of nightmares. He populates his narrative with characters that are unhappy and often unlikable yet compelling all the same. Kane in particular shines as an antihero who ultimately fails to save the day in a rather dark conclusion for some characters. The author deftly weaves the seemingly unrelated threads of witchcraft, politics, racism, war, and insanity into one cohesive tale. Though the murders are unsettling, more frightening yet is the pervasive willingness to sterilize “degenerates” by those who would “welcome a world government as long as it excluded Jews, coloreds, mental defectives, and gypsies.”
A chilling, and unfortunately timely, commentary on the dangers of demonizing the other.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5355-9436-3
Page Count: 410
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
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
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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