Brandon proves that even an impossible situation with only one outcome can suddenly yield an unexpected solution.
An old debt threatens to upend a young ex-con's efforts to start his life over again.
"Nobody's even," aging crime boss Arthur Bonne tells the kid standing in his office. "There's guys I help and guys I hurt. You fall in that first bunch. I'm asking you to do something for me, and if you do it right and don't perform a full wop opera in my office, I won't ask you to do nothing else." The kid is Pratt Zimmer; he's just 25, but he's lived and lost enough to know better than to believe Bonne will ever leave him alone. Pratt's fresh from a three-year jail stint for his part in a botched car theft that set Bonne back $250,000, and now Bonne expects more from him than just jail time to make them square again. Added to the money debt is an emotional one: Bonne partly blames Pratt for the death of his son, Matty, even though Pratt was behind bars by the time his childhood friend's indulgence in too many drugs got the better of him. "It could only be punishment," Pratt realizes about the job. "That was the only thing that made sense. Forced penance for Matty." In this novel and his others—especially Arkansas (2008) and Citrus County (2010)—Brandon explores the difficult circumstances surrounding desperate characters in humid, forgotten corners of the Southeast. Here, he's crafted a compelling thriller set around Tampa in the 1990s as a young ex-con struggles to start his life over, even though the deck is stacked against him. It's not just the job Bonne tells him to finish by the end of June—kill an accountant who's stealing from Bonne—that's the problem. Pratt's still grieving the loss of his parents in a boating accident, coping with the guilt he partly accepts for not doing more to protect Matty from himself, and nursing a smoldering love for Kallie, Matty's ex. He's also facing a string of lowlife thugs, drug dealers, and a dirty cop as he tries to figure out how not to kill the accountant and still free himself from Bonne's debt. Brandon keeps the story moving at a brisk pace, and his choice of a 1990s setting is especially interesting: It reminds readers how different—and how difficult—things like a stakeout were in a cellphone-free, GPS-less world.
Brandon proves that even an impossible situation with only one outcome can suddenly yield an unexpected solution.Pub Date: Nov. 26, 2024
ISBN: 9781963270075
Page Count: 250
Publisher: McSweeney’s
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
© Copyright 2026 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.
