An intelligently crafted but sluggishly paced crime tale.
A celebrated FBI agent investigates the disappearance of a young African-American girl and the possibility of a racist conspiracy in this novel.
FBI agent James Strait received national recognition for his bravery in foiling a terrorist attack by a crazed, anti-government cult. But in the aftermath, his life was left in shambles. A fellow agent and girlfriend died in the raid on the cult’s redoubt, and Strait was badly wounded and became addled by Meniere’s disease, which makes him prone to bouts of disabling vertigo. His future at the FBI in doubt, Strait returns to his hometown—Pine River, Arizona—and is drawn to the case of a missing 9-year-old girl, Jophia Williams. Pine River Police Chief August Kladspell takes it for granted that Jophia was murdered by her father—Marvin Elijah Williams has a nefarious political past—and seems disinterested in pursuing the investigation further. But Strait uncovers evidence of breathtaking incompetence, and then of a staged murder, raising the possibility that Jophia is still alive. He also has reason to believe that the local police department is contaminated by racial bias—many on the force are members of the New Confederation, a white supremacist group growing in popularity. Strait discovers that more children similar in age and race have vanished, a pattern that points to a criminal conspiracy. Meanwhile, he seeks help from a physician who specializes in Meniere’s disease and flirts with the possibility of starting a new romance, slowly attempting to rebuild his emotionally shattered life. The author writes in crisply clear prose (“Everyone knew that those peaceful-looking houses, known as the Stacks, were bases for all manner of criminality, and everyone knew there was no tranquil meadow in The Meadows. The area was ground-zero for all the big city shit that manifested itself just as horrifically in this small town as it did in Phoenix”). Eidswick (The Language of Bears, 2017) portrays his protagonist with great depth; Strait is a stoical combination of grit and emotional vulnerability. In addition, the author artfully raises provocative questions about the fraught relationship between race and institutional power. Finally, there’s plenty of gripping action here, cinematically depicted. But the plot’s pace is languidly slow, and there’s no good reason the novel should be over 400 pages. Furthermore, the conclusion is well-telegraphed, making the book more effective as a drama than a mystery.
An intelligently crafted but sluggishly paced crime tale.Pub Date: Dec. 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-976755-14-9
Page Count: 418
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A treat for fans of The Evil Dead or Zombieland, complete with affordable solutions for better living.
A hardy band of big-box retail employees must dig down for their personal courage when ghosts begin stalking them through home furnishings.
You have to give it up for the wave of paranormal novels that have plagued the last decade in literature; at least they’ve made writers up their games when it comes to finding new settings in which to plot their scary moments. That’s the case with this clever little horror story from longtime pop-culture journalist Hendrix (Satan Loves You, 2012, etc.). Set inside a disturbingly familiar Scandinavian furniture superstore in Cleveland called Orsk, the book starts as a Palahniuk-tinged satire about the things we own—the novel is even wrapped in the form of a retail catalog complete with product illustrations. Our main protagonist is Amy, an aimless 24-year-old retail clerk. She and an elderly co-worker, Ruth Anne, are recruited by their anal-retentive boss, Basil (a closet geek), to investigate a series of strange breakages by walking the showroom floor overnight. They quickly uncover two other co-workers, Matt and Trinity, who have stayed in the store to film a reality show called Ghost Bomb in hopes of catching a spirit on tape. It’s cute and quite funny in a Scooby Doo kind of way until they run across Carl, a homeless squatter who's just trying to catch a break. Following an impromptu séance, Carl is possessed by an evil spirit and cuts his own throat. It turns out the Orsk store was built on the remains of a brutal prison called the Cuyahoga Panopticon, and its former warden, Josiah Worth, has returned from the dead to start up operations again. It sounds like an absurd setting for a haunted-house novel, but Hendrix makes it work to the story’s advantage, turning the psychological manipulations and scripted experiences that are inherent to the retail experience into a sinister fight for survival.
Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-59474-526-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Kin “[find] each other’s lives inscrutable” in this rich, sharp story about the way identity is formed.
Inseparable identical twin sisters ditch home together, and then one decides to vanish.
The talented Bennett fuels her fiction with secrets—first in her lauded debut, The Mothers (2016), and now in the assured and magnetic story of the Vignes sisters, light-skinned women parked on opposite sides of the color line. Desiree, the “fidgety twin,” and Stella, “a smart, careful girl,” make their break from stultifying rural Mallard, Louisiana, becoming 16-year-old runaways in 1954 New Orleans. The novel opens 14 years later as Desiree, fleeing a violent marriage in D.C., returns home with a different relative: her 8-year-old daughter, Jude. The gossips are agog: “In Mallard, nobody married dark....Marrying a dark man and dragging his blueblack child all over town was one step too far.” Desiree's decision seals Jude’s misery in this “colorstruck” place and propels a new generation of flight: Jude escapes on a track scholarship to UCLA. Tending bar as a side job in Beverly Hills, she catches a glimpse of her mother’s doppelgänger. Stella, ensconced in White society, is shedding her fur coat. Jude, so Black that strangers routinely stare, is unrecognizable to her aunt. All this is expertly paced, unfurling before the book is half finished; a reader can guess what is coming. Bennett is deeply engaged in the unknowability of other people and the scourge of colorism. The scene in which Stella adopts her White persona is a tour de force of doubling and confusion. It calls up Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, the book's 50-year-old antecedent. Bennett's novel plays with its characters' nagging feelings of being incomplete—for the twins without each other; for Jude’s boyfriend, Reese, who is trans and seeks surgery; for their friend Barry, who performs in drag as Bianca. Bennett keeps all these plot threads thrumming and her social commentary crisp. In the second half, Jude spars with her cousin Kennedy, Stella's daughter, a spoiled actress.
Kin “[find] each other’s lives inscrutable” in this rich, sharp story about the way identity is formed.Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-53629-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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