A simple tale with a hero who’s just a regular guy, which makes him all the more likable and exemplary.
An agent in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, searching for missing parolees, fears that the Aryan Brotherhood may be responsible for their disappearances in Shaw’s straightforward debut thriller.
When Sam Wellington’s injury in Afghanistan renders him ineligible for re-enlistment in the Army, he gets a job as a correctional officer at San Quentin State Prison in California. It’s a tough gig, and he gladly opts for a parole agent position in nearby Calaveras and Amador counties, even if his predecessor, Lucas Kane, inexplicably disappeared. Sam’s duties seem fairly routine until he promises Jesse Ramirez’s family that he’ll look for the recently missing parolee. Other parolees disappear as well, but it’s the discovery of Kane’s badge that leads Sam to wealthy Felix Tully, who has ties to the Aryan Brotherhood. Sam, after a few run-ins with the Aryan group, whose members include Tully’s brother Hitler, believes he may find answers at Tully’s mansion in the mountains. The author aptly develops his protagonist well before the Calaveras investigation starts. Sam, for example, is an exceptional Army Ranger, but seeing him out of his element at the grueling San Quentin prison establishes him as both tolerant and pragmatic. His down-to-earth status makes the missing persons case even more intimidating and also sets the stage for his inevitable romance with the abrasive Pam Maxant. The no-nonsense Pam, whose cabin Sam rents, works her way into Sam’s investigation, including tagging along to a crime scene because she knows a more efficient route. The tale involves little mystery: Sam doesn’t gather clues or scrutinize evidence, and he has no genuine suspects beyond Tully and his Aryan entourage. But the villains are unquestionably menacing, particularly Hitler and his cohorts, sparking conflict with Sam after one merely brushes up against Sam’s shoulder in passing. The protagonist, meanwhile, makes progress with both the missing parolees and in his relationship with Pam. Lengthy scenes with Sam at a Veterans Affairs Hospital and San Quentin initially seem irrelevant but pay off in the blistering final sequence that allows Sam to use skills he’s picked up along the way. Mystery fans may see the lack of genre elements as a shortcoming, but Shaw keeps the story moving and retains interest with engaging characters.
A simple tale with a hero who’s just a regular guy, which makes him all the more likable and exemplary.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9706798-8-8
Page Count: 388
Publisher: Talahi Media Arts
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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