This grim, epic crime drama is rich in history and thrilling moments.
An Irish ex-boxer seeks vengeance against a New York–based criminal organization in Konvitz’s historical novel.
When professional boxing is banned in 1900, Billy McGuinness steps out of the ring indefinitely. The 30-something man, who’s also “one of Chicago’s most feared gamblers,” is ready to establish himself elsewhere. He sets up a gambling riverboat in St. Louis and later a brewery back in Chicago, but by 1911, he’s working toward a much darker goal. The Aronbergs, a family he’s close to, are brutally murdered in New York, and McGuinness attributes the crime to the System—Irish gangsters tied to crooked cops and dirty politics. He concocts an elaborate plan that involves bumping elbows with the likes of Jim Monaghan, the man McGuinness surmises to be behind the Aronbergs’ deaths. He proposes to the Irish gangsters the notion of a “national syndicate” that they must organize themselves before the Jewish and Italian criminals take over. It’s a power play that may catch Monaghan’s attention but won’t, McGuinness believes, turn out in the System’s favor. All of this demands the former boxer steer clear of any connection to the Aronbergs, lest his revenge scheme come to light. The situation grows even more dangerous when McGuinness gets his hands on an incriminating item that will prove Monaghan is dirty, along with copious others who’ll want to ensure this evidence never surfaces. To see his plan through, McGuinness makes full use of his allies (including a Chicago crime boss and a New York reporter), his highly capable fists, and the occasional explosive.
Konvitz’s sprawling tale opens in 1878 with an exhilarating boxing match–cum–street fight. This is crucial scene-setting for the early 20th-century characters, including McGuinness. Following this prologue, however, is a leisurely paced decade (1900-1910) full of exposition detailing McGuiness’ businesses in St. Louis and Chicago (and even Monaghan’s wedding party). Still, the author fills the story with diverting historical nods, such as the impending 1904 Summer Olympics in the United States and a news story about the Titanic prior to its fateful maiden voyage. There’s likewise a bevy of true-life figures mingling with fictional characters, from newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. It surely won’t surprise readers that this cast of lawbreakers teems with unsavory types. McGuinness is the quintessential antihero who doesn’t shy away from violence while seeking retribution—what he calls justice—for a murdered family. Myriad others in this novel don’t care who they hurt or kill; their seemingly endless rounds of dialogue are littered with profanities and racial slurs. A significant portion of the story unfolds in New York, where tension is perpetually high—there’s more than one shocking demise, and McGuinness isn’t the only one deceiving people. The final act includes a series of memorable epilogues that follow some of the characters to the mid-1900s.
This grim, epic crime drama is rich in history and thrilling moments.Pub Date: June 17, 2025
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 531
Publisher: 89th Street Press
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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