Straightforward fantasy tales showcasing diverse forms of alleged justice.
Dean’s (Cryptic, 2016, etc.) short story collection explores the darker—and supernatural—side of the American judicial system through the centuries.
The opening tale, “Witch Tryals (1692),” like the three stories that follow it, begins in familiar terrain. Puritans in the late 17th century are accusing people of witchcraft and sentencing them to death. But the witches in Salem Town, who practice “white magic,” mete out their own brand of justice against those who commit perjury to ensure wrongful convictions. “Judge and Jury,” the longest story, is set in the Old West in 1881. In it, Dr. Donovan encounters robbers on his way to the lawless town of Canyon Diablo, Arizona. The town’s new sheriff, Sam Canton, saves him and throws one of the outlaws in jail—but members of his notorious gang are intent on breaking him out. Fortunately, Donovan has a strange device of his own design to combat them—even beyond death. “The Devil Made Me Do It!” follows the televised 1978 trial of Derrek Wagner, who declares that he murdered people at the devil’s command—but a surprise witness may counter that claim. In the near-future world of “The Wheel,” a new, particularly savage form of capital punishment may well steer some from lives of crime. Dean ably tackles serious issues throughout this collection, from religious persecution to kangaroo courts. The no-frills prose not only maintains a steady pace for each story, but also effectively grounds the supernatural components, making someone returning from the dead, for example, seem plausible. Likewise, Dean takes time in establishing his characters. Defense attorney Barry Palmer is a relatively minor player in “The Wheel,” for instance, but the author deepens his portrayal, showing him to be a lawyer with a high success rate who’s likely facing a losing case. Despite the stories’ horrific elements, they’re neither graphic nor excessively violent.
Straightforward fantasy tales showcasing diverse forms of alleged justice.Pub Date: June 22, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5447-6436-8
Page Count: 262
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 11, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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