Despite some flaws, this engaging thriller should appeal to theater folks and New Orleans fans.
A man who returns to his hometown following his father’s untimely death finds passion and peril in this novel.
After receiving the blunt news “Father found dead,” actor Jeff Chaussier heads home—18 hours on a bus for the fearful flyer—to see family and friends and to investigate whether anyone drove his fireman dad to an early grave. Chaussier first visits his best friend, chain-smoking Don, who runs a small theater in the French Quarter in New Orleans. Sparks fly between Chaussier and the theater’s stage manager, Bryna Boudreaux, a feisty, Garbo-featured, blond knockout in a tummy-baring pink T-shirt. Bryna has secrets, and one of them smokes stogies and drives around in a big, black car. Chaussier’s dad also had secrets; after his best friend, Bubber Watkins, “died ugly” in a suspicious fire, he declared that there was “something” he “was going to do something about.” Someone wants to do something about Chaussier too, as he is jumped by two thugs in the French Quarter. Could the attack be linked to the bogus autopsy report on file for his father? In this lively series opener, some pieces of Sanchez’s (A-Roving No More, 2019, etc.) puzzle don’t fit—why, for example, does Chaussier initially suspect his father’s death wasn’t accidental, as a police report claimed? Why didn’t Chaussier go to his dad’s funeral? And why was news of his father’s death sent in a telegram rather than relayed in a phone call? Dated language creeps in; for example, Chaussier says, “I needed to husband my wardrobe.” In addition, deficient editing results in numerous sentences being repeated word for word several pages apart. Hearing Chaussier routinely explain “I’m an actor” grows tiresome but descriptions of the Crescent City seem almost poetic (“New Orleans has no star. She is an ensemble piece”). The author is at his best when depicting the food, the smells, and the buildings and docks of the French Quarter (some readers may even target the Big Easy as their next travel destination).
Despite some flaws, this engaging thriller should appeal to theater folks and New Orleans fans.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-692-26862-9
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Southern Girl Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2019
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
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
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SEEN & HEARD
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