Stop this world, you’ll want to get off.
A thousand years after the apocalypse or Armageddon or something, Visa Second America finds history repeating itself through an attempt to recast civilization from its ashes.
The third and most audacious novel by Boice (NoVa, 2008, etc.) is futuristic without being science fiction or even speculative fiction. Because except for the fact that Visa has now branded itself on pretty much everything (from the name of every country to psychological conditions including “Visa Schizophrenia and Visa Bipolar Disorder”), the 34th century isn’t appreciably different from the present. Maybe young people are a little meaner and more desperate, and maybe ruling officials are more corrupt in their relations with organized crime, but the author’s social commentary plainly sees these as matters of degree rather than transformation: “They were sociopaths. But they were human beings. And human beings are all alike. Always have been, always will be.” Such are the reflections of the protagonist and frequent first-person narrator, Junior Alvarez, an Irishman (yes, it’s that kind of novel), engaged in interminable conflict with the Italians. The reader meets Junior as an incarcerated juvenile delinquent, who thinks he’s the reincarnation of Alejandro el Grande (until he realizes that Bob Dylan is the reincarnation of Alexander the Great, and that he, Junior, is the reincarnation of Bob Dylan, writer of such classics as “Imagine,” “Auld Lang Syne” and “Beat It"). He later becomes a flunky, a hoodlum, a combination community leader and drug pusher and, through the novel’s extended finale, a crook on the lam. In a plot that seems more like a graphic novel or a screenplay than the literary fiction to which it seems to aspire, he finds himself pitted against a mother whose son he battered in a street brawl. Much of the novel that isn’t narrated by Junior finds his female adversary wreaking vengeance against society in general and stalking Junior in particular. Justice is served…maybe.
Stop this world, you’ll want to get off.Pub Date: June 14, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4165-7544-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
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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