A sufficient legal mystery but the protagonist’s complicated love life steals the show.
An environmental lawyer works a case involving the deaths of two teenagers from mysterious chemicals in this debut thriller.
In Mike Jacobs’ few years at the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, his boss has assigned him lousy cases. Now he’s finally second-chairing something substantial: the sudden deaths of teens Peter Mason and Cindy Battaglia. The young couple swam in a river that’s evidently a dumping site for chemicals; phenol exposure is ultimately what proved fatal. As Mike searches for the culprit responsible for illegal dumping, his personal life gets significantly more complex. He begins casually dating two women: Sherry Stein, a deputy attorney general, and Patty Dixon, a nurse at the home where his sickly mother resides. Both relationships become more serious, and Mike struggles with his choice of committing to one and severing the other. Meanwhile, Mike receives a phone call warning him off his investigation and is completely unaware that a certain car is regularly following him. And with a gubernatorial election on the horizon, powerful individuals have their eyes on the unfolding case. The incumbent governor wants to use the tragedy against his opponent, District Attorney Gerald Sheehan, who’s cooking up his own sinister scheme. Burcat packs his story with enthralling subplots and characters. Mike, for example, has phone conversations with his rabbi brother concerning their mother, who has early-onset Alzheimer’s, and gets relationship advice from first chair Roger Alden. Likewise, the women are multidimensional: Sherry is investigating Sheehan’s possibly crooked campaign funds, and Patty is a single mom with an ex-boyfriend who won’t pay child support. They’re likable as well, making indecisive Mike a less than stellar protagonist who can’t even decide if his actions are honest or dishonest. Despite a solid setup and intelligent prose, the environmental-themed mystery gradually reaches a conclusion with little input from Mike. Readers may be more invested in the inevitable confrontation between Sherry and Patty, and in that regard, the story doesn’t disappoint.
A sufficient legal mystery but the protagonist’s complicated love life steals the show.Pub Date: May 31, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-946664-62-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Headline Books, Inc.
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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