A psychological thriller that takes readers inside the mind of an unusual serial killer.
In Swiatek’s debut, disaffected loner Albert Champion—a man who’s fond of talking to himself and prone to spur-of-the-moment rants—roams the streets of Toronto, vigorously disliking most of what he sees, including the hustling street kids, the lazy municipal employees, the jostling crowds, and most of all, the city’s homeless, who congregate in parks and on heating grates. Champion’s wife left him after nursing him through a throat-cancer scare (a fact that doesn’t seem to bother him), and now his life’s mission is to attack Toronto’s homeless problem in the most direct manner possible: by killing the homeless. “He couldn’t possibly kill every one of them,” he reasons, “but he would have to make enough of an impact to scare the majority off the streets and hopefully the hell out of Toronto altogether.” Alternating chapters introduce readers to the other main characters: overworked, slightly hangdog police Sergeant Don Wright of the Toronto Homicide Division; and idealistic, crusading journalist Mary Monticello. The shooting death of Champion’s first victim alerts them both that a new kind of psychotic, calling himself the Weed Killer, is loose in the city, and as his one-man crime spree continues, both are drawn into the chaos he creates. As the Weed Killer’s rampage garners more and more headlines, public opinion becomes divided. “I don’t pretend to know exactly what is going on with this Weed Killer,” reads one letter that lands on Monticello’s desk, “but I do know that the downtown streets of Toronto have never been more pleasurable to walk down.” Swiatek delivers a high-camp variation on Thomas Harris’ Red Dragon (1981), with winning results. The plot is fairly standard, and even includes a last chance at romantic salvation for the killer, but the author invests it with such energy that readers will be easily swept along. The author also gives Champion a hilariously short-tempered nature that many readers will find entertaining.
A well-told serial-killer tale.
Pub Date: July 5, 2013
ISBN: 978-1484081181
Page Count: 248
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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