An unconventional but consistently absorbing multigenre tale.
In Bishop’s (Red-Line: Trust Destiny, 2015, etc.) mystery/thriller series starter with supernatural elements, a reporter helps a man who believes a curse has been killing his lovers.
Grayson Steele and his best friend, Cooper Stone, started a software company that made them millionaires. But Grayson, who rarely leaves his beachfront house on Sea Island, is miserable. Back in high school, one of his friends, Joanie, died from an apparent suicide. Her mother was so distraught that, at Joanie’s funeral, she wished the pain of losing a loved one on all her daughter’s friends. She pointed specifically at Grayson, who became certain that the woman had cursed him. Since then, every time he’s intimate with a woman whom he loves, she dies three days later. Gillian Fletcher is a reporter who hopes to write an article about the reclusive millionaire, and it soon becomes clear (to readers, at least) that she’s prodding Grayson for information on his deceased lovers. She has a theory that it’s not a curse that’s killing the women but a person, although she doesn’t know their motive. She makes an offer to Grayson to feign a sexual relationship with him in order to ensnare the killer. But Grayson soon learns that the reporter is harboring an incredible secret. Bishop’s novel is two books in one: a murder mystery, which reaches an early resolution, followed by a reveal about Gillian that results in a very different kind of story. Readers who’ve already read Bishop’s preceding trilogy will be in familiar terrain, but for others, it will be a somewhat jarring genre shift. Nevertheless, there’s romance and suspense throughout as Grayson and Gillian succumb to their mutual attraction and occasionally find themselves in mortal peril. Lengthy scenes play out with copious dialogue, but they entail engaging discussions about murder suspects or the particulars of Gillian’s family. During action scenes, however, the author truly delivers; in one tension-ridden sequence, Gillian hides from a threat, “her breathing coming in short shallow gasps. Her heart hammered and her side burned from exertion.”
An unconventional but consistently absorbing multigenre tale.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-692-77840-1
Page Count: 402
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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