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
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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