A promising start to what could be a fresh paranormal-crime series, if plotting and characterization improve.
A crime novel set in the Colorado backcountry, mixing gritty suspense, supernatural horror, and Native American folklore.
Two hikers discover pieces of a dead body strewn around a snow-swept trail near the tourist town of Deadraven, Colorado. A disabled veteran nicknamed Radio monitors the report from his mountain cabin on a police scanner, except he learns about the grisly find before it actually happens. Logan Lone Bear Tuu’awta, newly returned to his hometown and interning with the local police, discovers the tracks of a large bear at the crime scene. He can also sense something else—a supernatural presence tied to his past. With this mix of horror, mystery, and the unexplained, Clark (The Devolution Chronicles: Rise of the Chimera, 2011, etc.) builds an intriguing setup and a diverse cast of characters. The bodies soon start piling up, with Radio providing Logan advance notice of new deaths. Along with his childhood friend Raven and Sheriff Billie Sue Martin, Logan must unravel the complicated mystery and track down the man-eating bear, which might be an invader from the spirit world. However, as the mystery progresses, the plot begins to get muddy. “Believe, and then you will see,” Ten Bears, a Medicine Man, tells Logan. But for readers unfamiliar with Native American mythology, additional explanation is needed to believe in Logan’s spiritual powers, which guide him in solving the mystery. Deeper, more developed back story early on would flesh out these intriguing characters as well. For example, what exactly happened to Logan in the 10 years he’s been gone from his hometown, and why did he decide to return? What in the sheriff’s checkered past has put her under the thumb of town leaders? And the climactic confrontation with the bear seems to come too soon. Without more information about past events, it’s difficult to make sense of Logan’s dreamlike confrontation with the bear. The extended explanation that follows deflates the fight scene’s action-packed punch.
A promising start to what could be a fresh paranormal-crime series, if plotting and characterization improve.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0985343859
Page Count: 286
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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