An unconventional mystery that’s smart and unpredictable.
A staff psychologist at a disaster shelter must deal with an imminent hurricane and a murderer among the stir-crazy group in this thriller.
As a Disaster Emergency Medical Personnel System volunteer, Dr. Persephone “Seph” Smith becomes deployable when the president deems a disaster large-scale. This includes approaching Hurricane Ignatius, sending the Philadelphia psychologist to a decommissioned Air Force base in Texas. Seph gets the 12-hour night shift and quickly spots a few evacuees who may pose psychiatric concerns, most noticeably homeless veteran and possible paranoid schizophrenic Carol. But it’s not long before someone turns up with multiple stab wounds. Seph offers to help Chief Shane Bishop track down the killer with her “enhanced empathy” that allows her to establish deep, emotional connections to others and determine who’s capable of murder. The body count unfortunately rises and may be tied to signs of erratic behavior Seph witnesses from both evacuees and staff, in particular, paranoia. Outside assistance is hardly an option with Ignatius on its way and cell service down. Seph has no choice but to scrutinize the people in the shelter and decide whether they’re acting bizarrely due to pre-existing conditions or something more widespread. Delozier’s (Type & Cross, 2016) protagonist, in a 2006-set prequel to the author’s preceding novel, is an unusual but enthralling detective. Her curious ability shapes her as a character, with all that empathy responsible for nightmares that have plagued her since childhood. But it doesn’t seem to be much of a tool for sleuthing, at least not in this narrative; the resilient Seph works out what’s happening and formulates a solution using general intuition. Nevertheless, the surprising tale’s isolated setting is intensified by characters butting heads (for example, Bishop versus in-charge Dr. Annie Parrish) and supplemented by references to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (even in names, like Dr. Dodgson). Seph’s shrewdness comes through in vivid and detailed descriptions, as she notes others’ quirks: a fidgety someone swiping “at a lock of frizzy, gray hair sticking to her damp forehead.”
An unconventional mystery that’s smart and unpredictable.Pub Date: June 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-937178-90-1
Page Count: 203
Publisher: WiDo Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 11, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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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