A promising, often entertaining debut soaked through with Texas flavors.
A closeted local politician, a beautiful college student with serious financial problems, a “fixer” with connections, and a mob goon race for treasure in this tense, Dallas-based novel by Lynch (Babylon 5, 2006, etc.).
College student Allison Kerry is working two summer jobs, struggling to save money for law school and help out her hapless brother and his critically ill son. Her ethics and tenacity are admirable—but when grocery bags containing packs of $100 bills fall off the roof of a blue Suburban and onto her beat-up Volkswagen’s hood, she decides to hold on to it rather than report it or find its rightful owner, despite a cryptic note in one of the bags. How did nearly $750,000 end up on the roof of that SUV? This question briskly sets the plot in motion. The SUV, it turns out, belongs to Bill Garrett, an unscrupulous political fixer who’s committed countless crimes. City councilman Billy Clayton misleads him into believing that they’re both being blackmailed by a giant construction company and that they must pay off another council member to ensure a stadium contract and avoid an intimidating mob enforcer named James Garrelli. But Clayton has a deeper secret: the married Texan likes to step out with men at a bar called Booty Scoot. When Garrelli puts a gun to Clayton’s head, makes him say “I’m a hick who likes dick,” and blackmails him with photos, he knows he needs Garrett’s help. Meanwhile, with the help of a stalwart neighbor, Allison attempts to evade and outwit everyone else. Overall, this story is well-paced with some suspenseful moments that sometimes verge on ludicrous; for example, at one point, an African-American council member calculates “reparations” he’s owed to the penny and demands a bribe of $746,841.03. The principal characters are credible throughout, but the story is marred by some cartoonish figures, such as a hit man who can’t hit straight, a backwoods animal caretaker who names animals after his exes so he’ll enjoy killing them, and a wife addicted to buying heirloom china on eBay.
A promising, often entertaining debut soaked through with Texas flavors.Pub Date: May 10, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-61296-697-7
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 4, 2016
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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