Police chases and social commentary come together in this rollicking murder story about an affluent family torn apart by...
A killer and his girlfriend go on the run from the FBI in this crime novel.
Arthur McPhee is the owner of a successful wine and spirits business that operates many liquor stores in the Northeast. He lives in the tony enclave of Whispering Hills, Connecticut, a “bed and breakfast town where only the very wealthy could afford to live.” His younger son, Donald, who is gainfully employed in the family business, is getting married, while his older son, Droogan, is practically middle-aged, unemployed, disheveled, overweight, and smokes crack. Arthur is horrified by Droogan’s listlessness, having watched him “flunking out of college and then flunking out of life.” Droogan enters into a romantic entanglement with Angela, one of the household’s black maids. Arthur tries to buy off Angela so that she won’t marry Droogan, and she readily accepts the money. Meanwhile, Arthur’s third wife, Sabrina, harbors a secret hatred of her husband. She enlists Droogan in a plan to kill Arthur for his money, which the son agrees to do because he is so upset about his father trying to pay off Angela. When Droogan accidentally kills the wrong person, he and Angela skip town, attempting to flee to Canada. Pursued by the formidable Agent Roderigo Rojas of the FBI and a mercenary named the Spartan, Droogan slips into a shadowy religious cult, where his problems begin to multiply. Havel (The Orphan of Mecca, 2015, etc.) packs a good deal into his novel, which at first glance may appear to be a simple crime story. Murdering a family member to get his money is an old routine, but the author develops the book’s diverse characters in a layered enough way to give the story more substance than its lighthearted tone would indicate. Themes of interracial or interreligious marriage predominate, from both a black and white perspective. Havel seems interested in whether the American take on group politics is universal and whether crossing lines leads to ruin. As the body count increases, readers learn more about Rojas and some troubled members of the cult, leading to a climax that is a bit far-fetched but still a lot of fun.
Police chases and social commentary come together in this rollicking murder story about an affluent family torn apart by greed, prejudice, and its own foibles.Pub Date: May 18, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-68122-840-2
Page Count: 430
Publisher: America Star Books
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
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
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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