A protagonist whose charm and wit outshine the plot, which readers surely shouldn’t mind.
A Sarasota lawyer takes the case of a wife charged with killing her husband and gets enwrapped in a caper rife with kidnappings, gangsters, and gators in Kelly’s (The Lost Treasure, 2013) thriller.
Tommy Ails’ legal approach is a bit unorthodox. He manages to provoke the judge presiding over his latest case, which winds up being thrown out on a technicality. Fortunately, his client is a content Tony “Two Fingers” Scirocco, a Mafia head who sends Candy Wrap in Tommy’s direction. Cops have Candy pinned for the bludgeoning death of her prominent businessman husband, Stephen. Seems like a fairly standard investigation, until Tommy realizes that the person spying on his and Candy’s meeting is reputed Colombian drug lord Don CeSar. Before he knows it, Tommy’s receiving threats courtesy of a hoodlum duo that wants him to drop Candy as a client and end his association with Tony. Tony, meanwhile, finds himself a murder suspect when one of his employees takes a couple of bullets to the skull. Tommy gets helping hands from pal Detective Walter Simpson and cousin/roommate/new assistant Donny Dweed in (hopefully) exposing the real killer(s). The attorney, however, isn’t the only one in danger, as thuggish types may go after Candy, the object of Tommy’s wandering eye, or his landlady, Madge (aka Mom). The author’s quirky comedy is a pure delight, thanks to a handful of uproarious characters. Donny, for one, is truly the gumshoe, doing Tommy’s legwork for free as he aspires to be a “private dick.” Tommy, on the other hand, is the antithesis of a rugged Hollywood detective; he drinks margaritas, passes out or throws up on his own (no Mickey required), and uses a kitchen utensil as a weapon instead of a gun. Readers looking for mystery may be disappointed, because baddies are warning Tommy off the case before an investigation’s really begun. But while the murderer’s identity isn’t surprising, watching Tommy’s problems pile up, including a film festival that gets everyone distracted, is endlessly amusing. Tommy can easily carry a series—and with any luck will bring along his friends and family.
A protagonist whose charm and wit outshine the plot, which readers surely shouldn’t mind.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5001-0143-5
Page Count: 210
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 6, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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