A welcome return of a witty protagonist.
Private investigator Max Bowman confronts a familiar enemy in the third installment of Canfield’s (Blue Fire, 2016, etc.) thriller series.
Max has no desire to go up against criminal mastermind Andrew Wright again after barely surviving the first two times. But he can’t say no to Kaitlyn Marks, who blames Wright for putting her U.S. senator father into a near-vegetative state (during the events of Blue Fire) and offers to fund an investigation into Wright’s whereabouts. She tells Max that she received a phone call from a woman named Yvonne Vargas, who claims to have proof that she’s Wright’s illegitimate daughter. He leaves New York City to meet Yvonne in Miami, where things quickly spiral out of control. There, he spots Barry Filer, Wright’s lethal second-in-command—and the first suspect when one of Max’s friends turns up dead. News that his beloved dog, Eydie, has run away makes Max return to New York, where a trio of murderous bicyclists torment him. Filer’s recurring, sudden appearances soon threaten not only Max, but also the people around him, including his young cohort Jeremy, aka “PMA” (“Power, Mind, Action”). Meanwhile, the PI delves into Wright’s past, which appears to intersect with his own. The initial mystery, involving Wright’s letters to Yvonne’s mom, quickly takes a back seat as Canfield’s complex story develops. Filer always seems to know where Max is, but specifics on Wright’s latest enigmatic “venture,” dubbed “Red Earth,” are harder to come by. The story heavily refers to preceding books in the series (and occasionally spoils them), so new readers won’t be lost. Still, they should read the previous books, if only to get the full evolution of the father-son dynamic between Max and PMA (whom the PI affectionately calls “kid”) and to appreciate the accumulation of Wright’s fiendish deeds. Max’s first-person narration is more winsome than ever; for instance, his rejoinder to a bodyguard’s reputed ability to rip a phone book in half is, “They still make those?”
A welcome return of a witty protagonist.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9975707-2-4
Page Count: 364
Publisher: joined at the hip
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Honeyman’s endearing debut is part comic novel, part emotional thriller, and part love story.
A very funny novel about the survivor of a childhood trauma.
At 29, Eleanor Oliphant has built an utterly solitary life that almost works. During the week, she toils in an office—don’t inquire further; in almost eight years no one has—and from Friday to Monday she makes the time go by with pizza and booze. Enlivening this spare existence is a constant inner monologue that is cranky, hilarious, deadpan, and irresistible. Eleanor Oliphant has something to say about everything. Riding the train, she comments on the automated announcements: “I wondered at whom these pearls of wisdom were aimed; some passing extraterrestrial, perhaps, or a yak herder from Ulan Bator who had trekked across the steppes, sailed the North Sea, and found himself on the Glasgow-Edinburgh service with literally no prior experience of mechanized transport to call upon.” Eleanor herself might as well be from Ulan Bator—she’s never had a manicure or a haircut, worn high heels, had anyone visit her apartment, or even had a friend. After a mysterious event in her childhood that left half her face badly scarred, she was raised in foster care, spent her college years in an abusive relationship, and is now, as the title states, perfectly fine. Her extreme social awkwardness has made her the butt of nasty jokes among her colleagues, which don’t seem to bother her much, though one notices she is stockpiling painkillers and becoming increasingly obsessed with an unrealistic crush on a local musician. Eleanor’s life begins to change when Raymond, a goofy guy from the IT department, takes her for a potential friend, not a freak of nature. As if he were luring a feral animal from its hiding place with a bit of cheese, he gradually brings Eleanor out of her shell. Then it turns out that shell was serving a purpose.
Honeyman’s endearing debut is part comic novel, part emotional thriller, and part love story.Pub Date: May 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2068-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
More faithful to the original but less astonishing than Christopher Logue’s work and lacking some of the music of Fagles’...
Fresh version of one of the world’s oldest epic poems, a foundational text of Western literature.
Sing to me, O muse, of the—well, in the very opening line, the phrase Wilson (Classical Studies, Univ. of Pennsylvania) chooses is the rather bland “complicated man,” the adjective missing out on the deviousness implied in the Greek polytropos, which Robert Fagles translated as “of twists and turns.” Wilson has a few favorite words that the Greek doesn’t strictly support, one of them being “monstrous,” meaning something particularly heinous, and to have Telemachus “showing initiative” seems a little report-card–ish and entirely modern. Still, rose-fingered Dawn is there in all her glory, casting her brilliant light over the wine-dark sea, and Wilson has a lively understanding of the essential violence that underlies the complicated Odysseus’ great ruse to slaughter the suitors who for 10 years have been eating him out of palace and home and pitching woo to the lovely, blameless Penelope; son Telemachus shows that initiative, indeed, by stringing up a bevy of servant girls, “their heads all in a row / …strung up with the noose around their necks / to make their death an agony.” In an interesting aside in her admirably comprehensive introduction, which extends nearly 80 pages, Wilson observes that the hanging “allows young Telemachus to avoid being too close to these girls’ abused, sexualized bodies,” and while her reading sometimes tends to be overly psychologized, she also notes that the violence of Odysseus, by which those suitors “fell like flies,” mirrors that of some of the other ungracious hosts he encountered along his long voyage home to Ithaca.
More faithful to the original but less astonishing than Christopher Logue’s work and lacking some of the music of Fagles’ recent translations of Homer; still, a readable and worthy effort.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-393-08905-9
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
