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
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.
A dramatic, complex imagining of the origins of Stonehenge.
In about 2500 B.C.E. on the Great Plain, Seft and his family collect flints in a mine. He dislikes the work, and the motherless lad hates the abuse he gets from his father and brothers. He leaves them and arrives at a wooden monument where sacred events such as the Midsummer Rite take place. There are also circles of stones that help predict equinoxes, solstices, even eclipses. This is a world where the customary greeting is “May the Sun God smile on you,” and everyone is a year older on Midsummer Day. Except for a priestess or two, no one can count beyond fingers and toes—to indicate 30, they show both hands, point to both feet, then show both hands again. Casual sex is common, and sex between women is less common but not taboo. Joia, a young woman who becomes a priestess, wonders about her sexuality. After a fire destroys the Monument, she leads a bold effort to rebuild it in stone. To please the gods, they must haul 10 giant stones from distant Stony Valley. Of course neither machinery nor roads exist, so the difficulties are extraordinary. Although the project has its detractors, hundreds of able-bodied people are willing to help. Craftspeople known as cleverhands construct a sled and a road, and they make the rope to wrap around the stones. Many, many others pull. And pull. Meanwhile, the three principal groups—farmers, woodlanders, and herders—all have their separate interests. There is talk of war, which Joia has never seen in her lifetime. Soon it seems inevitable that the powerful farmers will not only start one but win it, unless heroes like Seft and Joia can come up with a creative plan. But there is also the matter of love for Joia in this well-plotted and well-told yarn. The story has a lot of characters from multiple tribes, and they can be hard to keep track of. A page in the front of the book listing who’s who would be helpful.
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781538772775
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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
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