Breathtakingly bold in its scope. If Mankell never links his far-flung, multigenerational horrors closely together, that’s...
A sweepingly ambitious tale of corruption, injustice and revenge that ranges over three continents and 140 years, from the creator of Swedish police detective Kurt Wallander (The Pyramid, 2008, etc.).
The first person to discover the massacre at Hesjövallen is so horrified that he suffers a fatal heart attack and is hit by a truck. The stabbing and hacking of 19 neighbors and their pets in ten houses has decimated the village. Duty officer Vivi Sundberg, called to the scene, swiftly realizes that all the victims except for one unidentified boy share one of three last names—Andersson, Andrén or Magnusson—and theorizes that in a community likely to be marked by inbreeding, they may all be members of a single family. Birgitta Roslin, a judge in Helsingborg whose mother’s foster parents were among the victims, connects the horror to a smaller-scale but equally brutal murder spree: the slaughter of Jack Andrén and his wife and children in Reno, Nev. A long flashback to the shameful treatment of Chinese slave laborers on the American transcontinental railroad in the 1860s supplies further hints as to the motive. But it’s not until Birgitta travels to Beijing to accompany a friend on a business trip—and to gather information about a mysterious Chinese man who booked a hotel room near Hesjövallen the week of the crime—that a clear portrait of the killer begins to emerge. The improbable but touching friendship Birgitta strikes up with Hong Qui, the sister of a powerful player in the high-stakes game of Beijing construction, serves as the nerve center of Mankell’s sprawling tale, even though it reveals more information to the reader than to Birgitta. Another long detour, this one to contemporary Zimbabwe, adds new resonance to the massacre back in Sweden before Wallander rings down the curtain in London’s Chinatown.
Breathtakingly bold in its scope. If Mankell never links his far-flung, multigenerational horrors closely together, that’s an important part of his point.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-307-27186-0
Page Count: 370
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
Melodramatic and filled with a lot of pointless meanderings, but Jackson’s many fans will still enjoy it.
New York Times’ bestselling author Jackson puts her touch on this dark thriller and tale of forbidden romance.
Ava Church Garrison has it all. She’s beautiful, a near-genius and wealthy. Married to a handsome attorney and living in her family’s ancestral home on a small island off the coast of Washington, her future couldn’t be brighter, except for one small problem. It appears to everyone, including Ava, that she’s lost her mind. It all started when she lost her child. Two-year-old Noah wandered out of the house, and authorities believe he fell into the icy water and drowned. But Ava won’t accept this. She keeps searching for Noah, her searches prompted by sounds and visions she can’t control. No matter what she does, Ava keeps hearing Noah call for help and sees him toddling off toward the dock. To add to Ava’s issues, she has her loony-bin-worthy family living with her. Her cousin, Jewel-Anne, wheelchair-bound following an accident that killed Ava’s only brother, and the rest of her family treat her like she’s a basket case. Even her best friend (who's Jewel-Anne’s nurse) and the household help are creepy. In fact, everyone in the book qualifies as a character out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Plus, there’s also the little problem of the escaped madman, who may or may not still be hiding on the island, and Ava’s therapist, a woman she fears has grown too close to Ava’s husband, Wyatt. Soon, the landscape is littered with bodies, and Ava is rapidly finding herself the target of a police investigation. With only the help of a newly hired hand on the estate, she tries to prove she’s not crazy and find her son in the bargain. Jackson’s book is crammed with suspects and a palpable air of creepiness, but readers will spot a number of inconsistencies in the story and ultimately grow weary of the way she draws out the action with unnecessary dialogue and details.
Melodramatic and filled with a lot of pointless meanderings, but Jackson’s many fans will still enjoy it.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7582-5857-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
Though the novel eventually begins to sag under the weight of all its plot elements, fans of the psychological thriller will...
A pathological liar, a woman in a coma, a childhood diary, an imaginary friend, an evil sister—this is an unreliable-narrator novel with all the options.
"A lot of people would think I have a dream job, but nightmares are dreams too." Was it only a week ago Amber Reynolds thought her job as an assistant radio presenter was a nightmare? Now it's Dec. 26 (or Boxing Day, because we're in England), and she's lying in a hospital bed seemingly in a coma, fully conscious but unable to speak or move. We won't learn what caused her condition until the end of the book, and the journey to that revelation will be complicated by many factors. One: She doesn't remember her accident. Two: As she confesses immediately, "Sometimes I lie." Three: It's a story so complicated that even after the truth is exposed, it will take a while to get it straight in your head. As Amber lies in bed recalling the events of the week that led to her accident, several other narrative threads kick up in parallel. In the present, she's visited in her hospital room by her husband, a novelist whose affections she has come to doubt. Also her sister, with whom she shares a dark secret, and a nasty ex-boyfriend whom she ran into in the street the week before. He works as a night porter at the hospital, giving him unfortunate access to her paralyzed but not insensate body. Interwoven with these sections are portions of a diary, recounting unhappy events that happened 25 years earlier from a 9-year-old child's point of view. Feeney has loaded her maiden effort with possibilities for twists and reveals—possibly more than strictly necessary—and they hit like a hailstorm in the last third of the book. Blackmail, forgery, secret video cameras, rape, poisoning, arson, and failing to put on a seat belt all play a role.
Though the novel eventually begins to sag under the weight of all its plot elements, fans of the psychological thriller will enjoy this ambitious debut.Pub Date: March 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-14484-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
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