A disjointed work.
Messy detective story with a sharp, self-important political agenda set during the Zapatista revolt, co-written by insurgency leader Marcos and Spanish-Mexican novelist Taibo.
The pair alternate chapters and pursue individual storylines that more or less converge at the end with the bad guy’s apprehension. Marcos follows the mission of 61-year-old Zapatista warrior Elías Contreras, sent by “El Sup”—Marcos writing about himself in the third person—into the “Monster” (Mexico City) to “pick up city ways.” Elías’s folksy, plainspoken narrative conveys the Zapatistas’ political philosophy; he offers brief biographies of some members of this group from the mountains of southeast Mexico made up largely of indigenous peoples and internationals. Taibo, for his part, brings back Héctor Balascoarán Shayne, the one-eyed Mexico City detective familiar from Taibo’s own mystery series (Return to the Same City, 1996, etc.), who has been receiving cryptic, paranoid messages on his answering machine from Jesús María Alvarado, a former buddy and political prisoner who was murdered in 1969. Is the caller Alvarado’s son, or his ghost? Whoever the voice belongs to, his messages implicate a corrupt character named Morales, a guerrilla-turned-official who disappeared during the Dirty War waged by previous governments (not that the current one is portrayed here as any better). Alerted by El Sup to the menace of Morales’s possible reappearance, Elías runs into Balascoarán in Mexico City, and the two set out in pursuit. The plot swiftly devolves into a detailed rehashing of insurgent maneuvering over the decades, topped by a veritable bludgeoning litany of “the bad and the evil,” according to authorities ranging from Don Quixote to Leonard Peltier.
A disjointed work.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-933354-07-0
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Akashic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2006
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.
Too much free time leads a New Hampshire bookseller into yet another case of murder.
Now that Tricia Miles has Pixie Poe and Mr. Everett practically running her bookstore, Haven’t Got a Clue, she finds herself at loose ends. Her wealthy sister, Angelica, who in the guise of Nigela Ricita has invested heavily in making Stoneham a bookish tourist attraction, is entering the amateur competition for the Great Booktown Bake-Off. So Tricia, who’s recently taken up baking as a hobby, decides to join her and spends a lot of time looking for the perfect cupcake recipe. A visit to another bookstore leaves Tricia witnessing a nasty argument between owner Joyce Widman and next-door neighbor Vera Olson over the trimming of tree branches that hang over Joyce’s yard—also overheard by new town police officer Cindy Pearson. After Tricia accepts Joyce’s offer of some produce from her garden, they find Vera skewered by a pitchfork, and when Police Chief Grant Baker arrives, Joyce is his obvious suspect. Ever since Tricia moved to Stoneham, the homicide rate has skyrocketed (Poisoned Pages, 2018, etc.), and her history with Baker is fraught. She’s also become suspicious about the activities at Pets-A-Plenty, the animal shelter where Vera was a dedicated volunteer. Tricia’s offered her expertise to the board, but president Toby Kingston has been less than welcoming. With nothing but baking on her calendar, Tricia has plenty of time to investigate both the murder and her vague suspicions about the shelter. Plenty of small-town friendships and rivalries emerge in her quest for the truth.
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0272-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
A murder is committed in a stalled transcontinental train in the Balkans, and every passenger has a watertight alibi. But Hercule Poirot finds a way.
**Note: This classic Agatha Christie mystery was originally published in England as Murder on the Orient Express, but in the United States as Murder in the Calais Coach. Kirkus reviewed the book in 1934 under the original US title, but we changed the title in our database to the now recognizable title Murder on the Orient Express. This is the only name now known for the book. The reason the US publisher, Dodd Mead, did not use the UK title in 1934 was to avoid confusion with the 1932 Graham Greene novel, Orient Express.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1934
ISBN: 978-0062073495
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1934
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