An entertaining, educational mystery that neatly bridges the gap between fact and fiction.
An illustrious Founding Father adds supersleuth to his resume in McElroy’s (America’s Culture: Its Origins & Enemies, 2016, etc.) well-researched historical novel.
Jacob Maul, a Philadelphia Quaker, has been accused of murder after the body of his housekeeper, Lizzy Coons, was found on his property. An additionally damning complication for Maul—his second wife died under mysterious circumstances several years earlier. Unbeknownst to the Quaker, his greatest hope for acquittal lies with 79-year-old Benjamin Franklin. The beloved public figure, “the greatest man in America after General Washington,” believes in Maul’s innocence. Franklin enlists the assistance of family acquaintance and Revolutionary War veteran James Jamison to investigate Lizzy’s death. Despite his initial reluctance, Jamison is swayed by Franklin’s thoughtful arguments and agrees to take the case. McElroy offers an excellent whodunit, carefully crafting a range of suspects and dolling out numerous red herrings. The Holmes and Watson dynamic is apparent as the elder statesman parses out the clues and lectures on the importance of a method of inquiry. Franklin provides the financial backing and deductive reasoning while the more youthful Jamison spends his days tracking down information and suspects. Jamison is an endearing protagonist and a suitably straight-laced foil for the idiosyncratic Franklin, a Renaissance man with wide-ranging talents and intellect. And while Franklin tends to natter on, McElroy incorporates historical facts without lecturing readers. The depth of McElroy’s research and his background as a scholar is apparent throughout, both in his portrayal of 18th-century Philadelphians and Franklin in particular. McElroy subtly references Franklin’s ingenuity while also illuminating his quirky, appealing personality; for example, Jamison is summoned to a meeting with Franklin while the Founding Father soaks in a bathtub wearing a fur hat.
An entertaining, educational mystery that neatly bridges the gap between fact and fiction.Pub Date: June 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-946409-10-2
Page Count: 299
Publisher: Penmore Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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