by James Roberto Curtis ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1996
Intriguing first novel about an Afro-Caribbean religion, by the author of The Cuban-American Experience and The Mexican Border Cities (not reviewed). Miami homicide's Lt. Osvaldo GutiÇrrez, a class act as a detective, comes into two cases of similar ceremonial murder, pointing to the Santer°a—a cult that usually practices white magic and sympathetic (homeopathic) magic. But these particular murders, involving iron pots filled with magnets, goat blood, and railroad spikes, along with the placing of a decapitated head stolen from a graveyard, suggest otherwise. GutiÇrrez is fairly knowledgeable about such practices but consults the expert on them, Professor Henry J. Krajewski, author of Santer°a in Cuba: Persistence and Change in an Afro-Cuban Religion. Krajewski is helpful as he meanwhile also sends his Cuban-American grad student, Miguel Calder¢n, to see professor Rosa Garc°a-Mesa, herself an expert on Santer°a, since that is Miguel's current interest toward his thesis. Rosa shows Miguel her special holy room, chockablock with Santer°a relics favoring her chosen god, Shang¢, the terrible trickster masculine sex-god. Later, while visiting a bot†nica where cult items are sold by the towering 300-pound giant Hern†n, Miguel meets and falls in love with the gorgeous Ileana. A third murder occurs with the ritual death of Candyman, a minor drug dealer. When we discover that Krajewski and Rosa once had a child together in Cuba, that the child died, and that Ileana later was named after her, the story thickens, with either Ileana or Miguel seemingly set up to be the new ritual victim. The two—can't imagine why—decide to work with Lt. GutiÇrrez to thwart the plot. Neatly told, nice love interest, fairly mild melodrama, and rich backgrounds on occult and voodoo practices.
Pub Date: April 1, 1996
ISBN: 1-55885-096-1
Page Count: 197
Publisher: Arte Público
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1996
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by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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New York Times Bestseller
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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by Alex Michaelides ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 5, 2019
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
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A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
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