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THE CASE OF THE GOOD DEED

Name: THE CASE OF THE GOOD DEED
Author: Jim Shon

by Jim Shon Masa Hagino ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 23, 2017

An unevenly written mystery enlivened by intriguing historical and cultural tidbits.

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A battle between a powerful land developer in Hawaii and a group of locals and environmentalists escalates into violence in Shon (Poison in Paradise, 2016, etc.) and debut author Hagino’s murder mystery.

The Kaka’ako district of Honolulu, a semi-industrial area with ocean views on one side and mountain views on the other, is the perfect spot for a high-rise condo development. Businessman Robert Shilling has his ducks lined up—connections on the zoning board, a police officer in his pocket, and plenty of cash to buy off the other powers that be. Although he faces opposition from conservationists, archaeologists, a reporter, and locals who want the area to remain “pono” (or culturally authentic), it looks like Shilling will win the day. Then a distracted bus driver plows into the stone wall that surrounds the Kawaiahao Church, the oldest permanent house of worship on the island of Oahu; this unearths an old wooden box, which is given to the Cook Museum. Inside is an 1855 deed to a parcel of land that Shilling needs for his project. The deed, and a recent will that bequeaths the parcel to Kekoa Potter, a young Honolulu resident, is the catalyst that turns the civil battle into a murder mystery. Although it initially appears that reporter Zoe Lee and Cook Museum researcher Kirk Daniels will be the central protagonists, the most prominent characters as the novel progresses are Detective Charlie C. Chang and his restaurant-owner buddy Yoshiro “Moto” Fujimoto. The pace of the story increases after its central murder, but all the characters—the good, the bad, and the quirky—are thinly drawn, and the narration is sometimes more dispassionate than engaging: “And that’s how the conversation went for another five or so minutes.” That said, the authors do effectively communicate the long-standing tension between the Kama’ainas (native Hawaiians by birth) and the haoles (outsiders), and the cast interestingly reflects the diverse cultures (indigenous, Chinese, Japanese, mainland Americans, and so on) that comprise modern Hawaii. The plot also delivers a bit of a surprise at the end.

An unevenly written mystery enlivened by intriguing historical and cultural tidbits.

Pub Date: Jan. 23, 2017

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 148

Publisher: LitFire Publishing

Review Posted Online: April 26, 2017

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

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DINNER AT THE HOMESICK RESTAURANT

A NOVEL

by Anne Tyler ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 26, 1982

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Another of Tyler's family portraits: again she draws forth that elusive aura of redemptive family unity—despite snapped loyalties, devastating loneliness, and the conflicts between those who hit life hard and those who "live life at a slant." Ezra Tull—one of Tyler's gentle, bumbling men—is, unlike his meddlesome, reproachful mother Pearl, a "feeder." And at his "Homesick Restaurant," an untidy establishment where he'll solicitously "cook what other people felt homesick for," Ezra sometimes hopefully sets a table for family occasions. But "the family as a whole never yet finished one of his dinners—it was as if what they couldn't get right they had to keep returning to." The family, you see, has never been "right" since that day years before when Pearl's husband Beck left them for good: overburdened with the raising of three young children, lonely and friendless, Pearl became an angry sort of mother to them all, raising them each with a "trademark flaw." Older brother Cody is handsome, bland, a prankster who hides the unloved rage of an unfavorite son—and this drives him to steal Ezra's fiancé Ruth for his own wife. Sister Jenny, deserted by her second husband, given to child abuse, hurt and overworked, is rescued by the family. Gentle Ezra is stuck with mother Pearl—though he comes to see "her true interior self, still enormous, larger than life, powerful. Overwhelming." And when Cody's teenage son Luke hitchhikes, on the crest of one of Cody's pristine rages, from the Virginia home to Ezra in Baltimore, he too is inundated with family miseries. Finally, then, Pearl dies and the family will gather again at the restaurant. But this time they'll be joined by the near-mythical old Beck Tull: can he now ever be part of the family? Well, perhaps—because a life's anger seems to drain as Cody sees all his family "opening like a fan," drawing him in—and Beck, an old man who could not, long ago, take the "tangles" of family, will stay "until the dessert wine." Less magical, perhaps, than other Tylers—but her vision of saving interdependencies and time's witchiness continues to tease and enchant.

Pub Date: March 26, 1982

ISBN: 0449911594

Page Count: 324

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1982

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THREE DAYS IN JUNE
by Anne Tyler

- BOOK REVIEW
FRENCH BRAID
by Anne Tyler

- BOOK REVIEW
REDHEAD BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD
by Anne Tyler

- PROFILES
Anne Tyler

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SHOCK WAVE

by Clive Cussler ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 2, 1996

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Cussler's most adult, least comic-strip-y entry yet in the Dirk Pitt sea sagas. Gone is the outlandish plotting of Treasure (1988), when Dirk found Cleopatra's barge in Texas, and of Sahara (199), which unearthed Lincoln's body in a Confederate sub—buried in the desert sands. Now, in his 11th outing, Dirk Pitt and his National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA) fight villainous megalomaniac Arthur Dorsett, head of Dorsett Consolidated Mining, which holds the world's wealthiest diamond-mine empire. Pitt and his team must fight as well Dorsett's three daughters, the coldly beauteous Amazonian Boudicca, whose giant strength dwarfs Dirk's; the elegant but heartless Deirdre; and the star-crossed zoologist Maeve, whose bastard twins are held captive by grandfather Arthur so that Maeve will infiltrate NUMA and report on its investigation of his holdings—even though Dirk recently saved Maeve and Deirdre's lives in the Antarctic. First, however, Cussler takes us back to 1856 and a typhoon-battered British clipper ship, the Gladiator, that sinks in uncharted seas off Australia; only eight survive, including Jess Dorsett "the highwayman," a dandyish-looking convict, who discovers raw diamonds when stranded on an uninhabited island. From this arises the Dorsett empire, bent on undermining the world market in diamonds by dumping a colossal backlog of stones and colored gems into its vast chain of jewelry stores and, with one blow, toppling De Beers and all rivals. Worse, Arthur Dorsett excavates by high-energy-pulsed ultrasound, and when ultrasound from all four of his island mines (one on Gladiator Island, near New Zealand, another by Easter Island, the last two in the North Pacific Ocean) happen to converge, a killer shock wave destroys all marine and human life for 30 kilometers around, and now threatens over a million people in Hawaii—unless Dirk Pitt's aging body can hold it back. Tireless mechanical nomenclature, but furious storytelling.