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
Enjoyable gothic mystery with plenty of suspects and a sly sense of humor.
In this Edwardian gothic, a kind man succumbs to a family visit and barely escapes with his life.
Zebedee Wyckham is not close to his family, but his cousin Wynn Wyckham has been pressing him to visit remote Lackaday House. Disaster strikes when he’s greeted by Wynn’s confidential secretary: He’s shocked to realized that it’s Gideon Grey, who was once his boss and lover before they both got fired for having a sexual encounter in a supply closet. Also shocking is the fact that the rest of his family is there: Jessamine, a cousin he never knew existed; his brother Bram, and sister-in-law, Elise; another cousin, Hawley; plus a more distant cousin, Wyckham Dash. Wynn, who believes in the family curse that none of them will live longer than 50, wants one of them to marry Jessamine, who comes from an illegitimate branch, and will leave his fortune to whoever wins her hand. Zeb could certainly use it: Because he has trouble focusing and tends to forget things, his father considered him incapable of managing money and left his to Bram, with the proviso that he take care of Zeb, which he never did. Nonetheless, although no one believes him, Zeb has no interest in Jessamine or the money. The others are willing to fight for the inheritance in whatever mean-spirited underhanded way is necessary. Zeb is smart enough not to fall for the nasty tricks being played, although having his room filled with spiders nearly pushes him over the edge. Gideon becomes the only one he can trust as they rekindle their romance and work together to uncover a shocking truth.
Enjoyable gothic mystery with plenty of suspects and a sly sense of humor.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227523
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
Furiously suspenseful, but brain-dead second volume in Child’s gratuitously derivative Jack Reacher action series (Killing Floor, 1997). Reacher, a former Army Military Police Major, has now moved on to Chicago, where he gallantly assists a beautiful mystery woman hobbling on a crutch with her dry cleaning. Seconds later, Reacher and the woman, FBI agent Holly Johnson (also daughter of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as goddaughter of the President), are kidnaped by armed gunmen. Handcuffed together and tossed in the back of a van, the two are taken to the Montana mountain stronghold of Beau Borken, a fat, ugly, psychopathically vicious neo-Nazi militia leader given to sawing the arms off day laborers and making windy speeches about how he brilliant he is. Of course, the kidnappers don’t know that they have a former military police major in their clutches who, in addition to having a Silver Star for heroism, is one of the best snipers the Army has ever produced, can pull iron rings out of barn doors, and kill bad guys with lit cigarettes. Meanwhile, a team of FBI agents, at least one of whom is a mole leaking information to Borken, identify Reacher from a reconstructed photo taken from the dry cleaner’s surveillance camera. Borken, impressed with Reacher’s military record, lectures him about his brilliant plan to overthrow the US using a hijacked Army missile unit, with Holly held as a hostage in a specially constructed, dynamite-lined prison cell. Borken stupidly lets Reacher best him in a shooting match, then grandiosely turns his back on his captives enough times for Reacher and Holly to escape, cause havoc, get captured, escape, make love in the woods, cause more havoc, and get captured again, as General Johnson, FBI Director Harlan Webster, and General Garber, Reacher’s former commander, plan a covert strike on Borken’s fortress that’s certain to fail. Another Rogue Warrior meets Die Hard with all the typical over-the-top plotting, blood-splattering ultraviolence, lock-jawed heroics and the dumbest villains this side of Ruby Ridge.
Pub Date: July 20, 1998
ISBN: 0-399-14379-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1998
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