A promising debut crime novel about a Renaissance man-turned-reluctant criminal.
McKeever (Common Sense for Today’s America, 2014) offers a pleasantly ambling thriller about a talented mechanic and criminal.
Harry Strickland has a massive dog named Max, a small house, and a longtime girlfriend named Sophia, and he seemingly values them in that order. He also enjoys painting and extreme sports, and is a skillful, if occasional, car thief. After nearly getting nabbed on one such heist, the 30-something Harry decides to aim higher and “up his game. Not just a little, but in a way to make himself independently wealthy in five years.” Aided by a thoughtful biker named John and two-bit hood named Ozzie, his usual partners, he methodically executes a series of random crimes, squirreling away the bulk of the proceeds for future use. But the fact that he values friendship over competence comes back to haunt him, thanks largely to Ozzie’s screw-ups. Soon there’s a comely FBI agent, Karyn Dudek, on Harry’s tail, as well as a psychotic, small-time crime boss named Fat Tony, whose arrogant son was accidentally killed when Harry’s trio ripped off his drug deal. So Harry decides to pit the two sides against each other. In this first book of a planned series, McKeever has created a likable crook in Harry, a man who thinks, rather than shoots, his way out of difficult situations. Still, the author leaves few of the supporting cast members standing for future volumes, which is disappointing. However, he offers an added wrinkle, as the book’s subtitle suggests: an offer to readers to figure out the location of Harry’s treasure for a real-life cash prize, with the amount dependent on book sales and the number of correct solutions. Setting aside this gimmick, McKeever has still come through with a yarn that will keep readers engrossed.
A promising debut crime novel about a Renaissance man-turned-reluctant criminal.Pub Date: May 18, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9966883-6-9
Page Count: 460
Publisher: Freeze Time Media
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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