A solid and entertaining mystery.
A Florida private investigator looks into a shady shipboard death in this fifth installment of a series.
About to turn 30 years old in 2008, Miami Jones is at a crossroads. His short-lived career in professional baseball brought him to Florida, far from his New England home; after retiring from the game, he earned a master’s in criminology and became a full-time investigator, as recounted in four previous books in this series. Now his friends and mentors want him to settle down: buy a house, purchase a car, and join the yacht club. Lenny Cox, Miami’s boss and mentor, is moving his detective agency to new offices, which has an air of permanency. Stay or leave? To Miami, property taxes mean loss of freedom, but there’s something to be said for having a home. Meanwhile, the agency gets a new case with a personal connection: Will Colfax, the businessman/skipper of a yacht in Bahamian waters, goes overboard, his body not found. Among the passengers is Ron Bennett, Miami’s friend and colleague, who comes under suspicion when it’s learned that his ex-wife, Mandy, was seeing Will. The case isn’t strong, but a prosecutor is looking for a quick win. Luckily for Ron, others who were aboard also have motives—a connection with embezzlement, for example—and shaky alibis. Further digging leads Miami to examine some suspicious shipping containers and Alec Meechan, yet another passenger, who owns a luxury-car dealership. Miami will have to weather tense confrontations and tragedy before the truth comes out. Stewart (The Final Tour, 2017, etc.) is an able mystery writer who orchestrates his tangled plot well. His descriptions of South Florida, judicial proceedings, and shipboard practices all have the ring of truth. Although new readers to the series may have some questions (why is the PI agency moving?), the novel works well as a stand-alone. Stewart’s characterization is strong, unstereotyped, and engaging, especially regarding Miami. His musings about friendship, home, right and wrong, and similar matters give the book a strong emotional anchor and subtly show his growth as a person.
A solid and entertaining mystery.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9859455-9-6
Page Count: 370
Publisher: Jacaranda Drive
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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