A winning whodunit, but one that could have used more medical investigation.
In Young’s debut thriller, the discovery of two still-bleeding dead bodies on two different continents offers investigators a medical anomaly—and a murder mystery.
New York City police detective Sean O’Reilly doesn’t know what to make of his latest crime scene. A man at the Plaza Hotel is most definitely dead, but that hasn’t stopped his lifeless body from continuing to bleed. Confounded pathologists seek help from colleagues, which not only reveals a similar case in Switzerland, but also brings in Los Angeles hematologist Dr. Andy Friedman, who specializes in coagulation disorders. Andy and fellow physician Leila Baker look for a connection between the two dead men: the CEO of a health insurance company and a pharmaceutical company executive. But the doctors, working as amateur sleuths, soon realize that the case involves many other people, and a staggering number of dark secrets. Although the posthumous hemorrhaging certainly hints at a medical mystery, Young tends to play down the medical aspect. Instead, he skillfully fleshes out the investigative side of the story, starting with the dead men’s companies, and gradually fills out the pool of suspects. By the end, the story is gleefully convoluted, bouncing suspicion from one character to the next (and sometimes back again). However, its potentially intriguing medical element is surprisingly lacking; Andy and Leila focus their investigation almost exclusively on the killer’s motive, despite that fact that cops ask for their help to explain how the people were killed. O’Reilly and his partner, Detective Jose Alvarez, eventually send the docs to Switzerland, Norway and Scotland to interrogate probable murderers, and even bring them along when executing a search warrant. Young does provide a reason for the corpses, but it’s a little too simple, and doesn’t quite explain the bleeding. The budding romance between Andy and Leila, though, is absorbing; Andy’s reluctance to dive into a long-term relationship has nothing to do with professionalism, but with religion: She’s Muslim and he’s Jewish. Neither their relationship nor the inevitable solution to the mystery offer easy answers, and both are left open to readers’ interpretations.
A winning whodunit, but one that could have used more medical investigation.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-1483420639
Page Count: 468
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: Jan. 30, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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
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