A wickedly suspenseful thriller about the intrigue wrought when sex and lies are videotaped.
A smart, thrilling medley of twisted relationships, unrequited love and closely guarded secrets.
In late ’90s Manhattan, Jared “Jed” Chase confesses to his lawyer the snaky, illicit route that landed him in trouble and possibly in jail. Jed led a mundane life working in advertising-sales for The New York Times until he reconnected with recently divorced Katherine Cahill. Her ex-husband, Steve, who happens to be Jed’s college friend, introduced the two 10 years earlier—since then, Jed has been obsessed with her. When she approaches Jed looking for help, he understandably jumps at the chance, despite the sordid details. Apparently, Steve never changed his will after the divorce, so Katherine would inherit millions of dollars in the event of his death. She hatches a plan to murder Steve and take what she believes is rightfully hers. Blinded by adoration and passion, Jed agrees to do whatever Katherine asks; he even buys the gun. Within Sussek’s strong, captivating narrative, Katherine paints an awful picture of Steve’s behavior, going so far as to detail his secret sex-tape business, which, she tells Jed, she was pressured into participating. The tape she filmed with a client elicits angry, vengeful feelings from Jed toward Steve. Katherine, ever the conniving seductress, successfully manipulates Jed, but when the plan falls apart, Jed faces a life or death situation. He realizes that the woman he fantasized about for more than a decade could not be the woman intent on having her ex-husband murdered. In exquisitely detailed New York City, Jed employs his journalist friends to help piece together a different, even more lurid story than the one Katherine led him to believe.
A wickedly suspenseful thriller about the intrigue wrought when sex and lies are videotaped.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2012
ISBN: 9780615580074
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Kurti Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 30, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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