A captivating literary mystery that turns into an over-the-top whodunit.
A novel explores the ramifications of uncovering a lost work by one of the 20th century’s most influential writers.
Russell Padget, an embittered academic, sees a chance at literary fame when a disgraced Ph.D. student, Augustine Hiatt, asks for his help authenticating a stunning discovery. The find is a poem by James Joyce hidden in letters that the author wrote for years to his daughter, Lucia, a patient at a psychiatric hospital. Hiatt also attracts the attention of Beth and Todd Lawson, founders of a Christian cult called Friend to Man, who take offense at his moonlighting as a porn scriptwriter and begin sending threatening letters. When events take a tragic turn, police detective Alana Stamos must piece together what happened while she grapples with a key question: Could a lost Joycean manuscript be reason enough for murder? Broderick, who previously wrote a literary companion to Joyce’s work, James Joyce(2018), uses his expertise to create a moving portrait of Lucia, whose sections are among the most compelling in the novel. Flashbacks and personal letters present her as a smart, artistic woman with a unique voice, deeply devoted to her father. Close attention to biographical details also makes the lost manuscript—titled Archimedes at the Gear Fair, a “mini-epic about the development of life in the sea”—seem a plausible literary sensation. Unfortunately, the story doesn’t remain in the striking academic world, full of its own intrigues and villains, but keeps adding genres and plotlines to confusing effect. Many characters remain one-dimensional, subject to the whims and turns of the plot. This is the case with the Lawson siblings, who represent a caricature of zealots, down to incomprehensible reasoning, a vaguely incestuous bond, and a flair for the dramatic. The highlight of their subplot is a live broadcast of a crucifixion that bears no relation to the main events of the tale. Even characters with real depth and arresting backstories—like Stamos’ partner, Desi Arroyo, who lost a brother in a homophobic hate crime tragedy—stay on the sidelines, unsure of how they fit into the book.
A captivating literary mystery that turns into an over-the-top whodunit.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 9781592111428
Page Count: 262
Publisher: Addison & Highsmith
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
Everything you’d expect from Grisham, and this time something more.
After more than three decades of producing bestselling legal thrillers, Grisham tries his hand at a whodunit.
Eleanor Barnett wants Simon Latch to write her a will. That’s pretty much his job description, since practicing law in Braxton, Virginia, for 18 years hasn’t given him much opportunity to spread his wings. But the case of Netty, as she insists he call her, is different. She’s an 85-year-old widow whose second husband, Harry Korsak, left her with something like $20 million in cash and securities. She has a pair of stepsons, Clyde and Jerry Korsak, she’s determined to disinherit. And she already has a will, a document Wally Thackerman drafted a few weeks ago that basically allowed him, as Simon soon discovers, to pillage her estate. So instead of following his usual procedure and asking his longtime secretary, Matilda Clark, to type out the will, Simon types it himself and has it witnessed without saying anything to her. Of course he’d never do what Wally Thackerman did, but given his poverty, his gambling addiction, and his estrangement from his wife, Paula, whose income is a lot more stable than his own, he wouldn’t mind drawing just a bit on Netty’s wealth. As it happens, his new client turns out to be more trouble than she’s worth, maybe even more trouble than she would’ve been worth to Wally. And when she ends up dying, her death is swiftly identified as murder, with every indication that Simon killed her himself. The whodunit is unremarkable, but Grisham handles the legal complexities of the case with professional finesse and adds a wonderfully poignant portrait of a nothingburger lawyer trying his best to keep things more or less legal.
Everything you’d expect from Grisham, and this time something more.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9780385548984
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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