A rare, hopeful crime story that also manages to be deeply honest.
A debut novel delivers a journey through poverty and the heroin trade.
Leo Stegner is no stranger to illegal activities. Not only is his father involved with the Mafia through his gambling habit and efforts to pay his debts, but Leo has had a great deal of success as part of an auto-theft ring as well. But when his father and the head of the gang of robbers die in rapid succession, Leo resolves to alter his destructive course even as he vows revenge for his father’s murder. But despite going legit as a courier and later joining the military, Leo ends up deeper in the underworld than when he started; he’s now part of the international heroin market. Traveling throughout the world, running up against danger at every turn, Leo considers himself adaptable: “He would turn into a Goddamn Chameleon if it was a question of surviving.” But when he’s finally caught and convicted, turning his life around once and for all from the inside of a cell is the greatest—and most permanent—transformation he could ever imagine. McCarthy’s tale manages to paint an optimistic picture of what is possible when someone truly decides to change. The novel’s matter-of-fact prose style and fast pace serve the story well, giving a broad perspective on significant events in the United States in the latter part of the 20th century as well as the more personal circumstances that make Leo the man he is. Even so, the book is not without its emotional moments, as when Leo faces trial or when his dreams of retribution come to a head in the prison yard. The senses of anger and despair are palpable and should resonate with readers who’ve been down on their luck, especially any who are familiar with stories of inmates and rehabilitation. That said, as Leo’s life connects him with the space race, the Vietnam War, the introduction of Chinese heroin on American soil, and the war on drugs, even readers uninterested in prison stories will likely find plenty to recommend in this complex narrative.
A rare, hopeful crime story that also manages to be deeply honest.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-944136-00-0
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Ashanti Victoria Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
As tangled and turbulent as the hero’s nightmares, and that’s saying quite a bit.
Having survived his tempestuous debut, P.T. Marsh, of Georgia's Mason Falls Police Department, is back for more—including some residue from that first case that just won’t go away.
Dispatched like an errand boy to wealthy real estate mogul Ennis Fultz’s home to find out why he hasn’t joined his bridge buddies, Mayor Stems and interim police chief Jeff Pernacek, for their monthly game, Marsh and his partner, Remy Morgan, find Fultz dead in his bed. It turns out that his passing, devoutly longed for by so many of the people he’d crushed or outwitted on his way to the top, was helped along by the strategic dose of nitrogen somebody substituted for the oxygen he inhaled regularly, especially when he was expecting particular demands on his virility. Marsh and Morgan quickly focus on two candidates who might have made those demands: Suzy Kang, a recent visitor who was so eager to cover any traces that she’d been to Fultz’s house that she sold the car she’d driven there, and Connie Fultz, the victim’s ex-wife and perhaps his current lover, who acidly swats them away and tells them: “Look for some little gal who’s into bondage.” McMahon excels in sweating the procedural details of the investigation, which take the partners from a search for Suzy Kang and that missing car to a not-so-accidental car crash that’s evidently targeted a young girl who has no idea she’s implicated in the case. But he’s set his sights higher, taking in everything from a civil suit the relatives of the perp Marsh shot in The Good Detective (2019) have launched against him to a possible conspiracy behind the deaths of his deeply grieved wife and son, all of it larded with Georgia attitude and truisms, a few of which rise to eloquence (“I wasn’t good at faith. I was good at proof”).
As tangled and turbulent as the hero’s nightmares, and that’s saying quite a bit.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-53556-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Schneider’s debut enlivens the police procedural with offbeat characters and an appealingly complex hero.
Hollywood detectives catch the strange case of a brutally burned body.
Detective Tully Jarsdel is a former academic, leading his partner, Morales, to call him Professor. When he fights his way through multiple news crews to reach a corpse one day, it's unlike any he’s ever seen. The body is twisted, partially ravaged, and burned so badly it’s unrecognizable. Jarsdel and Morales intensely question Dustin Sparks, the horror-movie special-effects expert who found the body. He eventually admits that he saw the body being dumped from a van, but his addiction to OxyContin makes him a compromised witness. While waiting for DNA results, Jarsdel and Morales watch missing persons reports closely. An odd red disk glued to the victim’s palm turns out to be a 1996 quarter painted red: the case’s first clue, albeit a murky one. DNA connects the victim to grizzled convict Lawrence Wolin, who identifies the man as his brother. The pieces of Grant Wolin’s life come together via interviews prompted by a search of his dirty apartment. He sold jars of “genuine Hollywood dirt” on the street, smoked marijuana occasionally, and was apparently asexual. A dinner scene at the home of Jarsdel’s scholarly parents provides insight into his psyche and his sense of isolation. Though he fits in with neither the gritty world of police work nor the ivory tower of academia, he has a passion for justice.
Schneider’s debut enlivens the police procedural with offbeat characters and an appealingly complex hero.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4926-8444-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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