An entertaining suspense tale that plays celebrity mythology against reality in intriguing ways.
Rocker Lou Reed emerges from the doldrums by investigating a killing that may implicate Andy Warhol’s Factory scene in this mordant murder mystery.
Gomez spins his novel around a real-life low point in the rock god’s career after he quit the Velvet Underground in 1970. Reed worked as a typist for $40 a week at his dad Sidney’s accounting firm on Long Island, an unfathomable plunge into banality from the musician’s former place in the glam Manhattan demimonde swirling around his mentor Andy Warhol. In this mystery, Lou discovers that Sidney is paying to store the possessions, including a Warhol painting, of one Samuel Donato, who was shot to death in 1967. Looking into the incident, Lou learns from Warhol and Factory regulars that he knew Donato even though he has no recollection of it, a common occurrence ever since electroshock treatments in college impaired his memory. Lou is stonewalled by Sidney, and everyone else and gets a beating from a man who’s trying to steal the valuable painting. But the rocker unearths evidence that Donato was pitching a murder-for-art’s-sake scheme to Warhol and may have been killed for it by Lou himself. Much of the fun of Gomez’s tale is the spectacle of Lou, patron saint of wildness, deviancy, and heroin, marooned in his childhood bedroom, seething at Sidney’s lectures and festering in suburbia—“Nothing but car dealerships and department stores. Gas stations and muffler shops. Flat mediocrity everywhere he looks”—after his formation in the crucible of the Factory. (“Drag queens, drugs, cameras filming every moment and Andy, always in the background, making things….Everyone was either creative or crazy and, after you’ve been up for three days on speed, you really couldn’t tell the difference.”) The author’s sly, deadpan prose captures both settings and their denizens in wonderfully evocative detail, especially Warhol’s blend of cool and crass. (“Did you see the retrospective in Pasadena?...It was fabulous. A soup can sold the next day for sixty thousand. Can you believe it?”) As Lou unravels the darker threads of his past, the war for his soul takes surprising and resonant twists. The result is a page-turner that will make Reed’s fans think again about his character.
An entertaining suspense tale that plays celebrity mythology against reality in intriguing ways.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 165
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
A fresh and clever whodunit with an engaging twist.
A 16-year-old savant uses his Groundhog Day gift to solve his grandfather’s murder.
Nishizawa’s compulsively readable puzzle opens with the discovery of the victim, patriarch Reijiro Fuchigami, sprawled on a futon in the attic of his elegant mansion, where his family has gathered for a consequential announcement about his estate. The weapon seems to be a copper vase lying nearby. Given this setup, the novel might have proceeded as a traditional whodunit but for two delightful features. The first is the ebullient narration of Fuchigami’s youngest grandson, Hisataro, thrust into the role of an investigator with more dedication than finesse. The second is Nishizawa’s clever premise: The 16-year-old Hisataro has lived ever since birth with a condition that occasionally has him falling into a time loop that he calls "the Trap," replaying the same 24 hours of his life exactly nine times before moving on. And, of course, the murder takes place on the first day of one of these loops. Can he solve the murder before the cycle is played out? His initial strategies—never leaving his grandfather’s side, focusing on specific suspects, hiding in order to observe them all—fall frustratingly short. Hisataro’s comical anxiety rises with every failed attempt to identify the culprit. It’s only when he steps back and examines all the evidence that he discovers the solution. First published in 1995, this is the first of Nishizawa’s novels to be translated into English. As for Hisataro, he ultimately concludes that his condition is not a burden but a gift: “Time’s spiral never ends.”
A fresh and clever whodunit with an engaging twist.Pub Date: July 29, 2025
ISBN: 9781805335436
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.
Four residents of Coopers Chase, a British retirement village, compete with the police to solve a murder in this debut novel.
The Thursday Murder Club started out with a group of septuagenarians working on old murder cases culled from the files of club founder Elizabeth Best’s friend Penny Gray, a former police officer who's now comatose in the village's nursing home. Elizabeth used to have an unspecified job, possibly as a spy, that has left her with a large network of helpful sources. Joyce Meadowcroft is a former nurse who chronicles their deeds. Psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif and well-known political firebrand Ron Ritchie complete the group. They charm Police Constable Donna De Freitas, who, visiting to give a talk on safety at Coopers Chase, finds the residents sharp as tacks. Built with drug money on the grounds of a convent, Coopers Chase is a high-end development conceived by loathsome Ian Ventham and maintained by dangerous crook Tony Curran, who’s about to be fired and replaced with wary but willing Bogdan Jankowski. Ventham has big plans for the future—as soon as he’s removed the nuns' bodies from the cemetery. When Curran is murdered, DCI Chris Hudson gets the case, but Elizabeth uses her influence to get the ambitious De Freitas included, giving the Thursday Club a police source. What follows is a fascinating primer in detection as British TV personality Osman allows the members to use their diverse skills to solve a series of interconnected crimes.
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-98-488096-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
