Ellroy’s introduction pronounces this fledgling effort, presumably written around 1970, “a prophecy of the fine writer Mr....
This recently discovered first novel by Bunker (1933–2005), who wrote his way out of prison with a series of tough-guy novels and memoirs (Education of a Felon: A Memoir, 2000, etc.), hints at both the accomplishments and the limitations of his later work.
Southern California, 1962. Ernie Stark is a two-bit hustler with dreams bigger than his bankroll. Before he can rise to the next level in the drug-dealing subculture, he has to lift himself out of the gutter. The two-fix-per-day heroin habit his friend Momo Mendoza, a Hawaiian dealer, is subsidizing is about to turn into full-blown addiction. Det. Lt. Patrick Crowley, of the Oceanview PD, is pressing him to identify Momo’s supplier or go back to prison. Momo’s current twist, Dorie Williams, is coming on to him. And Dummy Floyd, a fearsome old prison mate who doesn’t need to talk to scare people, is hovering just close enough to give him the willies. After a slack opening movement in which Stark scores some start-up capital by running a con that seems a lot more clever to him than it will to savvy readers, Bunker settles into his true story: Stark’s attempts to get Crowley off his back and purchase or muscle his way higher up in Oceanview’s heroin trade by eliminating the competition. The story recalls the contemporaneous movies Yojimbo and A Fistful of Dollars, but Bunker’s voice is all his own, a weirdly compelling mix of stripped-down narrative, seen-it-all complacency, stilted dialogue and incongruous clichés (“The shapely dame moved with the swift sureness of a priest performing a grotesque ritual”).
Ellroy’s introduction pronounces this fledgling effort, presumably written around 1970, “a prophecy of the fine writer Mr. Bunker would become.” Strike “fine,” exactly the wrong word for Bunker’s real gifts, and that description is spot-on.Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-37494-5
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2007
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...
Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.
Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: He’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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