Entertaining and insightful crime stories.
In this follow-up collection, Dean (Cruel and Unusual, 2017, etc.) delivers four speculative tales centered on a near future American criminal justice system and its harrowing outcomes.
The book kicks off with “Dummy,” which follows two auto mechanics, Robert Holman and Juan Ortega, who are hoping for a relaxing night of drinks. They drive home drunk, resulting in an accident that kills an innocent woman; one of the men survives and goes on trial for vehicular homicide, among other charges, and if convicted, he’ll face a truly startling punishment. Indeed, all four of these Arizona-set stories showcase new, offbeat ways to render judgment. In “Early Release,” inmate Kelvin Heyer, a lifer, has a chance to get out of prison, but thanks to the Victims’ Rights Amendment, the family of the man he killed during a botched bank robbery gets to hunt him for 24 hours. Like all the stories here, this one offers multilayered characters; although Heyer is the one serving time for murder, it’s the vengeful, homicidal family members who come across as villains. In “Public Pool,” Luis Ortiz and Carlos Noriega’s small company wins a bid to build eight new swimming pools in Phoenix; a competitor’s attempt to pilfer their business leads to blackmail and murder—as well as a very curious method for extracting a confession. A woman fights a traffic ticket in “Broken Justice” and learns that the cutting-edge, automated “courtroom pods” may have terrifying flaws. Each story is swiftly paced; in the aforementioned “Early Release,” for instance, the protagonist spends much of the narrative on the run. But Dean’s stories also provide profound critical assessments of capital punishment—executions are expedited, or broadcast on the Justice Department’s website. They also offer critiques on contemporary technology; “Public Pool,” for instance, makes it clear that people should be very wary of what they include in texts.
Entertaining and insightful crime stories.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-72886-349-8
Page Count: 348
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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