An oddly pleasant little trot through Gold Rush–era California.
Applying methods gleaned from a Poe story, a pair of 19th-century working girls put their heads together to fight a crime spree.
This strange little book from Pulitzer Prize winner Smiley combines a lurid plot involving the serial strangulation and stabbing of prostitutes in Monterey, California, in the early 1850s with a naïve, plainspoken style of narration and characterization that makes even scenes of copulation and gore seem sort of G-rated. This reflects the personality of the protagonist, Eliza Ripple, who is the proverbial whore with the heart of a Midwestern elementary school teacher. Married off by her parents at a tender age to a nasty older man who drags her from Kalamazoo to California and then gets shot in a bar fight, she winds up on her own, working at the brothel of kindly Mrs. Parks. As her new boss explains it, “Everyone knows that this is a dangerous business, but, between you and me, being a woman is a dangerous business, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.” Eager for companionship, she finds a friend in a cross-dressing colleague named Jean McPherson, who's employed at an establishment serving the women of the town, a possibly ahistorical narrative flourish which adds to the dreamlike quality of the narrative. As women continue to disappear, as corpses turn up in the countryside outside town, and as local law enforcement remains steadfast in its lack of interest, Eliza and Jean decide to emulate the methods of detective Dupin in a Poe story they've both enjoyed: "The Murders in the Rue Morgue." Eliza begins to observe and analyze her clients' behavior and the contents of their pockets and the various characters she runs into around town, with a focus on finding the murderer. Like their creator, Eliza and Jean have a love for horses, and the agreeability of their various rides into the countryside somehow makes a bigger impression than the gruesome finds they turn up.
An oddly pleasant little trot through Gold Rush–era California.Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-525-52033-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
Walter is a beacon of wit, decency, and style.
A hermit comes out of the woods to save his family—and see if life in the world is worth living again.
The wild energy of Walter’s latest book is encapsulated in an exchange between former journalist Rhys Kinnick and a manic ex-cop name Chuck he’s connected with when his grandchildren are kidnapped out of his care: “Dude! Let’s do this!” Young Leah and Asher were delivered to Rhys’ ramshackle pile in the woods north of Spokane by a neighbor per the instructions of their mother, who needed a little break from her life. The thing is, Rhys hasn’t seen the kids in so long he doesn’t recognize them at first. He’s been living off the grid and out of touch ever since he punched his son-in-law in the face at Thanksgiving dinner in 2016. When the kids are almost immediately nabbed by goons connected with said son-in-law, Rhys gets help from a variety of partners: Lucy, an old flame from the newspaper; Chuck, who’s her old flame; and a Native American friend named Brian. Two out of three of these are packing heat, and several showdowns ensue, plus a high-spirited visit to a drug-positive electronica festival in the Canadian woods. The characters are created with loving care, the plot with reckless glee; Walter seems as fed up with various aspects of modern life as the smartphone-hating Rhys, and gives his version of the modern Northwest a distinctly Old West vibrational overlay. Things get really serious toward the end in a way we might not be totally prepared for, and doesn’t feel absolutely necessary, but perhaps it’s Walters’ way of saying the danger is real.
Walter is a beacon of wit, decency, and style.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9780062868145
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
Readers won’t want to leave behind the imagined world of pain and beauty that McConaghy has conjured.
The reality of climate change serves as the pervasive context for this terrific thriller set on a remote island between Australia and Antarctica.
Four family members and one stranger are trapped on an island with no means of communication—what could go wrong? The setup may sound like a mix of Agatha Christie and The Swiss Family Robinson, but Australian author McConaghy is not aiming for a cozy read. Shearwater Island—loosely based on Macquarie Island, a World Heritage Site—is a research station where scientists have been studying environmental change. For eight years, widowed Dominic Salt has been the island’s caretaker, raising his three children in a paradise of abundant wildlife. But Shearwater is receding under rising seas and will soon disappear. The researchers have recently departed by ship, and in seven weeks a second ship will pick up Dominic and his kids. Meanwhile, they are packing up the seed vault built by the United Nations in case the world eventually needs “to regrow from scratch the food supply that sustains us.” One day a woman, Rowan, washes ashore unconscious but alive after a storm destroys the small boat on which she was traveling. Why she’s come anywhere near Shearwater is a mystery to Dominic; why the family is alone there is a mystery to her. While Rowan slowly recovers, Dominic’s kids, especially 9-year-old Orly—who never knew his mother—become increasingly attached, and Rowan and Dominic fight their growing mutual attraction. But as dark secrets come to light—along with buried bodies—mutual suspicions also grow. The five characters’ internal narratives reveal private fears, guilts, and hopes, but their difficulty communicating, especially to those they love, puts everyone in peril. While McConaghy keeps readers guessing which suspicions are valid, which are paranoia, and who is culpable for doing what in the face of calamity, the most critical battle turns out to be personal despair versus perseverance. McConaghy writes about both nature and human frailty with eloquent generosity.
Readers won’t want to leave behind the imagined world of pain and beauty that McConaghy has conjured.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781250827951
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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