Massey’s debut novel manages to be both poetic and propulsive, unfolding a familiar story of the long odds against...
A young woman whose broken family amounts to at least two strikes against her struggles to survive and protect her kid brother before she’s overwhelmed by a rising tide of small-town criminal conspiracy.
Everybody in Blind River knows who Jamie Elders is. She’s the 19-year-old whose father died years ago in a barroom fight; the girl whose mother, Phoebe, takes the morning shift at the local diner now that she’s been released from prison after eight years; the girl who was left along with her brother, Toby, in the custody of her Uncle Loyal when it became clear that serving her sentence didn’t qualify Phoebe Elders any better for motherhood. The one thing they don’t know is how successful Jamie’s been at online poker, a gift she hopes will lift her out of upstate New York and allow her to live in Florida. But when she overreaches on the strength of a substantial pot she’s won, she ends up even deeper than usual in Loyal’s debt, and he’s quick to call in the marker when he needs help moving an inconvenient corpse from the home of Judge Jefferson William Keating to places unknown. Horrified at what she’s already done, at the ease with which Toby is sucked into the maelstrom, and at what worse possibilities lurk just around the corner, Jamie knows she can’t trust her mother or brother or uncle—or Jack DelMar, the longtime partner in Loyal’s financial shenanigans, or suspicious local cop Carl Garcia, or least of all Keating, the law in Blind River. The best she can do is trust her own instincts and her tactical cunning and her feral will to survive, the only worthwhile legacy she’s ever inherited from the Elders family.
Massey’s debut novel manages to be both poetic and propulsive, unfolding a familiar story of the long odds against redemption posed by family dysfunction with power and grace.Pub Date: July 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-68331-640-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crooked Lane
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
A mind-bending mystery, an insightful exploration of parent-child relationships, and a cautionary tale about bitterness and...
A young man seeking catharsis probes old wounds and unleashes fresh pain in this expertly crafted stand-alone from Edgar finalist Gaylin (If I Die Tonight, 2018, etc.).
Quentin Garrison is an accomplished true-crime podcaster, but it’s not until his troubled mother, Kate, fatally overdoses that he tackles the case that destroyed his family. In 1976, teenagers Gabriel LeRoy and April Cooper murdered 12 people in Southern California—Kate’s little sister included—before dying in a fire. Kate’s mother committed suicide, and her father withdrew, neglecting Kate, who in turn neglected Quentin. Quentin intends for Closure to examine the killings’ ripple effects, but after an interview with his estranged grandfather ends in a fight, he resolves to find a different angle. When a source alleges that April is alive and living in New York as Renee Bloom, Quentin is dubious, but efforts to debunk the claim only uncover more supporting evidence, so he flies east to investigate. Renee’s daughter, online film columnist Robin Diamond, is preoccupied with Twitter trolls and marital strife when Quentin calls to inquire about her mom’s connection to April Cooper. Robin initially dismisses Quentin but, upon reflection, realizes she knows nothing of Renee’s past. Before she can ask, a violent home invasion hospitalizes her parents and leaves Robin wondering whom she can trust. Artfully strewn red herrings and a kaleidoscopic narrative heighten tension while sowing seeds of distrust concerning the characters’ honesty and intentions. Letters from April to her future daughter written mid–crime spree punctuate chapters from Quentin's and Robin’s perspectives, humanizing her and Gabriel in contrast with sensationalized accounts from Hollywood and the media.
A mind-bending mystery, an insightful exploration of parent-child relationships, and a cautionary tale about bitterness and blame.Pub Date: July 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-284454-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Fans who still mourn the passing of Agatha Christie, the model who’s evoked here in dozens of telltale details, will welcome...
A preternaturally brainy novel within a novel that’s both a pastiche and a deconstruction of golden-age whodunits.
Magpie Murders, bestselling author Alan Conway’s ninth novel about Greek/German detective Atticus Pünd, kicks off with the funeral of Mary Elizabeth Blakiston, devoted housekeeper to Sir Magnus Pye, who’s been found at the bottom of a steep staircase she’d been vacuuming in Pye Hall, whose every external door was locked from the inside. Her demise has all the signs of an accident until Sir Magnus himself follows her in death, beheaded with a sword customarily displayed with a full suit of armor in Pye Hall. Conway's editor, Susan Ryeland, does her methodical best to figure out which of many guilty secrets Conway has provided the suspects in Saxby-on-Avon—Rev. Robin Osborne and his wife, Henrietta; Mary’s son, Robert, and his fiancee, Joy Sanderling; Joy’s boss, surgeon Emilia Redwing, and her elderly father; antiques dealers Johnny and Gemma Whitehead; Magnus’ twin sister, Clarissa; and Lady Frances Pye and her inevitable lover, investor Jack Dartford—is most likely to conceal a killer, but she’s still undecided when she comes to the end of the manuscript and realizes the last chapter is missing. Since Conway in inconveniently unavailable, Susan, in the second half of the book, attempts to solve the case herself, questioning Conway’s own associates—his sister, Claire; his ex-wife, Melissa; his ex-lover, James Taylor; his neighbor, hedge fund manager John White—and slowly comes to the realization that Conway has cast virtually all of them as fictional avatars in Magpie Murders and that the novel, and indeed Conway’s entire fictional oeuvre, is filled with a mind-boggling variety of games whose solutions cast new light on murders fictional and nonfictional.
Fans who still mourn the passing of Agatha Christie, the model who’s evoked here in dozens of telltale details, will welcome this wildly inventive homage/update/commentary as the most fiendishly clever puzzle—make that two puzzles—of the year.Pub Date: June 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-264522-7
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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