Worth the read for the detailed dramatization of Asperger’s; however, like Jacob, the reader will solve this whodunit far in...
A young autistic man obsessed with criminology is charged with the murder of his tutor, in Picoult’s suspenseful but anticlimactic latest (Handle with Care, 2009, etc.).
Jacob, now 18, first exhibited signs of Asperger’s syndrome at three, shortly after his first vaccination series. Highly verbal and analytical, but flummoxed by the most ordinary social interactions, Jacob negotiates a world fraught with terrors by adhering to a rigid set of rules and calming rituals. Jacob’s life centers around a CSI-esque TV show called CrimeBusters, which he must watch each afternoon as punctiliously as Rain Man watches Wapner. Usually, Jacob beats the CrimeBusters cast to a solution of each episode’s mystery by about 20 minutes. He’s created his own forensics lab in his bedroom, and, alerted by a police scanner, has snuck out at night to “crash” crime scenes in his small Vermont hometown. His mother, Emma, is a financially struggling, part-time advice columnist. Jacob’s father fled the chaotic household after Jacob knocked his younger brother Theo’s highchair over, wounding the infant. Theo, now 15, resents the oxygen sucked out of his family life by Jacob and, yearning to observe “normal” domesticity, has begun breaking into homes. Circumstances converge, resulting in the death, from blunt head trauma, of Jacob’s tutor, Jess, a college student. Theo enters a home where, unbeknownst to him, Jess is housesitting, and flees after surprising her in the shower. Her loutish boyfriend Mark had been observed quarreling with her earlier. Jacob, arriving for an appointment with Jess, finds her body and expertly sets up a crime scene to focus suspicion on Mark. The body of Jess is discovered in a culvert, and, on the pretext of seeking his advice, a police detective interrogates Jacob, who handily incriminates himself, even reciting his own Miranda Rights from memory. Emma hires a rookie attorney who gamely cobbles together a defense, with Jacob’s coaching.
Worth the read for the detailed dramatization of Asperger’s; however, like Jacob, the reader will solve this whodunit far in advance of the principals.Pub Date: March 2, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-7432-9643-4
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2010
There’s nothing romantic about Joe’s preoccupation with Beck, but Kepnes puts the reader so deep into his head that...
An impending sense of dread hangs over Kepnes’ cleverly claustrophobic debut, in which love takes on a whole new meaning.
Told from the perspective of Joe Goldberg, a seemingly normal Manhattan bookstore employee, the narrative is structured like a long monologue to the titular “you”: a young woman, Guinevere Beck, who becomes the object of Joe’s obsessive affection. They meet casually enough at the bookstore, and since she’s an aspiring writer just starting an MFA program, they bond over literature. Seems innocuous enough, even sweet, until we learn just how far Joe will go to make Beck—her preferred name—his own. Kepnes makes keen use of modern technology to chronicle Joe and Beck’s “courtship”: He not only stalks her on Twitter, but hacks into her email account and, after casually lifting her cellphone, monitors her text messages. In Joe’s mind, he’s keeping Beck safe from what he perceives as dangers in her life, particularly the clingy, wealthy Peach Salinger (yes, a relative of that Salinger); Beck’s hard-partying ex, Benji; and her therapist, the smooth-talking Dr. Nicky. When Joe and Beck finally, inevitably get together, it only serves to ratchet up Joe’s predatory, possessive instincts. Every text is analyzed as if it were the German Enigma Code, and every email is parsed and mined for secret meaning. There’s little doubt that the relationship is doomed, but Kepnes keeps the reader guessing on just how everything will implode.
There’s nothing romantic about Joe’s preoccupation with Beck, but Kepnes puts the reader so deep into his head that delusions approach reality.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2014
ISBN: 9781476785592
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Emily Bestler/Atria
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
With its flat, staccato tone and mournful mood, it’s almost as if the book itself were suffering from depression.
A young Philadelphia policewoman searches for her addicted sister on the streets.
The title of Moore’s (The Unseen World, 2016, etc.) fourth novel refers to “a long bright river of departed souls,” the souls of people dead from opioid overdoses in the Philadelphia neighborhood of Kensington. The book opens with a long paragraph that's just a list of names, most of whom don’t have a role in the plot, but the last two entries are key: “Our mother. Our father.” As the novel opens, narrator Mickey Fitzpatrick—a bright but emotionally damaged single mom—is responding with her partner to a call. A dead girl has turned up in an abandoned train yard frequented by junkies. Mickey is terrified that it will be her estranged sister, Kacey, whom she hasn’t seen in a while. The two were raised by their grandmother, a cold, bitter woman who never recovered from the overdose death of the girls' mother. Mickey herself is awkward and tense in all social situations; when she talks about her childhood she mentions watching the other kids from the window, trying to memorize their mannerisms so she could “steal them and use them [her]self.” She is close with no one except her 4-year-old son, Thomas, whom she barely sees because she works so much, leaving him with an unenthusiastic babysitter. Opioid abuse per se is not the focus of the action—the book centers on the search for Kacey. Obsessed with the possibility that her sister will end up dead before she can find her, Mickey breaches protocol and makes a series of impulsive decisions that get her in trouble. The pace is frustratingly slow for most of the book, then picks up with a flurry of revelations and developments toward the end, bringing characters onstage we don’t have enough time to get to know. The narrator of this atmospheric crime novel has every reason to be difficult and guarded, but the reader may find her no easier to bond with than the other characters do.
With its flat, staccato tone and mournful mood, it’s almost as if the book itself were suffering from depression.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-54067-0
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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