In need of more focus on the mystery and tighter reins on the plot and its structure.
Quinn’s legal thriller explores lingering World War II secrets.
After being suspended from practicing law, Jake Cotnoir’s first case back seems unwinnable. His client, an elderly Frenchman accused of murdering the French deputy ambassador to the United Nations, refuses to divulge his name and shrugs his shoulders every time Jake asks a question. Once a rising star working for Boston’s most prominent law firm, Jake is now broke, sleeping at a friend’s house and doing his best not to fall off the wagon. Quinn’s latest novel combines a legal thriller with a World War II spy plot. As Jake travels to France to unravel his client’s information, he learns he might be in over his head: Powerful people on both sides of the Atlantic are willing to go to extreme, even murderous lengths to make sure the silent Frenchman doesn’t divulge his secrets. The compelling mystery is often genuinely suspenseful. Quinn crafts a clever plot that encompasses Nazis, the French Resistance, the Jewish Defense League, unethical reporters and shady government agents—even FDR and Hitler make direct, personal impacts on the characters. However, the novel’s structure holds it back. Narrative momentum is drained by awkwardly inserted infodumps and pages of back story, and characters tend to incessantly pontificate in long speeches. At times, Quinn seems so intent on making sure the reader understands his intentions and appreciates the Nazi-era French suffering that he veers from satisfying storytelling into historical preaching. Readers will ache to get back to the actual story. Jake, an appealingly complicated character who suffers from bipolar disorder, often plunges into deep, dark depression; however, this diagnosis isn’t made until nearly the end of the novel. Until this key development, readers will be somewhat mystified by his actions and unlikely to understand why Jake, suddenly gripped by exhaustion, becomes “too frightened to take the five steps to the single edged blades in the bathroom cabinet that would give [him] relief.” Ultimately, Quinn’s novel feels too long and full of distracting subplots, as when Jake tries to “scare straight” a friend’s teenage son, with unwelcome results.
In need of more focus on the mystery and tighter reins on the plot and its structure.Pub Date: June 1, 2011
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 359
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Downbeat but often engaging poems and stories.
A slim volume of largely gay-themed writings with pessimistic overtones.
Poe (Simple Simon, 2013, etc.) divides this collection of six short stories and 34 poems into five sections: “Art,” “Death,” “Relationship,” “Being,” and “Reflection.” Significantly, a figurative death at the age of 7 appears in two different poems, in which the author uses the phrase “a pretended life” to refer to the idea of hiding one’s true nature and performing socially enforced gender roles. This is a well-worn trope, but it will be powerful and resonant for many who have struggled with a stigmatized identity. In a similar vein, “Imaginary Tom” presents the remnants of a faded relationship: “Now we are imaginary friends, different in each other’s thoughts, / I the burden you seek to discard, / you the lover I created from the mist of longing.” Once in a while, short story passages practically leap off of the page, such as this evocative description of a seedy establishment in Lincoln, Nebraska: “It was a dimly lit bar that smelled of rodent piss, with barstools that danced on uneven legs and made the patrons wonder if they were drunker than they thought.” In “Valéry’s Ride,” Poe examines the familial duties that often fall to unmarried and childless people, keeping them from forming meaningful bonds with others. In this story, after the double whammy of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hits Louisiana, Valéry’s extended family needs him more than ever; readers will likely root for the gay protagonist as he makes the difficult decision to strike out on his own. Not all of Poe’s main characters are gay; the heterosexual title character in “Mrs. Calumet’s Workspace,” for instance, pursues employment in order to escape the confines of her home and a passionless marriage. Working as a bookkeeper, she attempts to carve out a space for herself, symbolized by changes in her work area. Still, this story echoes the recurring theme of lives unlived due to forces often beyond one’s control.
Downbeat but often engaging poems and stories.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5168-3693-2
Page Count: 120
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A volume of poetry that shines when focused on the author’s experiences of race and culture.
A collection speaks in part to the poet’s Mexican-American heritage.
In these multifaceted poems, Mexico-born, Houston-raised Salazar (Of Dreams and Thorns, 2017) explores general human themes like love and war in addition to specific experiences as a person of color. The book begins with a sensual meditation on desire, featuring luscious descriptions of a lover, from lips “moist like youth” to the body’s “softest velvet” slopes. The poems shift to odes to cultural icons like the Tejano star Selena and Mexican-German painter Frida Kahlo as well as occasion pieces honoring his brother’s 40th birthday and a friend’s mother’s memorial service. The author hits his stride when he delves into identity. In “I Am Not Brown,” he contemplates the societal implications of skin tone and his inability to fit into the rigid category of Caucasian or Latino. “For white and black and brown alike / Are slaves to history’s brush strokes,” he writes. “Grateful for the Work,” perhaps Salazar’s loveliest poem, catalogs the day of a laborer, starting with an early morning awakening and following him as he toils in 100-degree heat, enjoys tacos from his lunch pail, buys beverages from a child’s lemonade stand, and returns home to an equally hard-working wife. The author then makes an abrupt turn toward Syria in a series of poems that condemn that country’s president, Bashar Hafez al-Assad. They serve as a rallying cry for Syrians and grieve for the murdered masses. Salazar’s closing poem, “Sons of Bitches,” is a clunky rant about a 20-year-old immigrant shot in the head by a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent. The gratuitous violence and political theologizing are ill at ease with the intimate, personal experiences that preceded them, such as the fablelike “A Mexican is Made of This,” in which Salazar beautifully describes the “rainbows, bronze, backbone, butterflies” that his people embody.
A volume of poetry that shines when focused on the author’s experiences of race and culture.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9991496-3-8
Page Count: 166
Publisher: Bronze Diamond Productions
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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