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GREEN BLOOD IS FOR FRANCE

Name: GREEN BLOOD IS FOR FRANCE
Author: John J. Gaynard
ISBN: 978-1479276158

by John J. Gaynard ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 23, 2012

France’s fictionalized political problems prove interesting, but the novel needs stronger writing and characterization.

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Gaynard dissects France’s political corruption in his novel about a police investigation into the murder of a young woman used as a sex toy by French political leaders.

Hardened Irish police detective Timothy O’Mahony investigates the murder of a young African woman after her mutilated body washes up on the Irish coast. Turns out that she disappeared from a luxury yacht chartered by a man vying to be the next French president. The purported reason for the trip was so the candidate could discuss campaign strategies with his advisors. In reality, the trip was an excuse to indulge in wild orgies, and O’Mahony must separate the culprit from the mass of suspects. In Paris, coverups and threats abound as the political rivals and competing police forces try to outdo each other; each proclaims they’re acting “for the good of France.” Gaynard’s (The Imitation of Patsy Burke, 2011, etc) novel examines the corruption and cynical exploitation of former French colonies, as well as France’s role in encouraging the chaos and savagery in the Congo to keep control of raw material supplies. The author’s knowledge of the political and legal systems often verges on political philosophy. Says a puzzled Congo politician, “Why is it only Africans that are charged by the International Criminal Court? Why don’t American or British leaders like Bush and Blair get hauled up?” Not-so-veiled references to Nicolas Sarkozy and Dominique Strauss-Kahn further connect the novel to contemporary French issues. These insights and unusual perspectives would be welcome as a backdrop to the overall narrative; the trouble is, the politics overwhelm the storytelling. Just when O’Mahony begins to develop a personality, other threads intrude. The novel could also do without tedious descriptions of mundane chores, such as taking showers and opening doors.

France’s fictionalized political problems prove interesting, but the novel needs stronger writing and characterization.

Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2012

ISBN: 978-1479276158

Page Count: 430

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2013

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE DEAD ZONE

by Stephen King ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 16, 1979

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The Stand did less well than The Shining, and The Dead Zone will do less well than either—as the King of high horror (Carrie) continues to move away from the grand-gothic strain that once distinguished him from the other purveyors of psychic melodrama. Here he's taken on a political-suspense plot formula that others have done far better, giving it just the merest trappings of deviltry. Johnnie Smith of Cleaves Mills, Maine, is a super-psychic; after a four-year coma, he has woken up to find that he can see the future—all of it except for certain areas he calls the "dead zone." So Johnnie can do great things, like saving a friend from death-by-lightning or reuniting his doctor with long-lost relatives. But Johnnie also can see a horrible presidential candidate on the horizon. He's Mayor Gregory Aromas Stillson of Ridgeway, N.H., and only Johnnie knows that this apparently klutzy candidate is really the devil incarnate—that if Stillson is elected he'll become the new Hitler and plunge the world into atomic horror! What can Johnnie do? All he can do is try to assassinate this Satanic candidate—in a climactic shootout that is recycled and lackluster and not helped by King's clumsy social commentary (". . . it was as American as The Wonderful Worm of Disney"). Johnnie is a faceless hero, and never has King's banal, pulpy writing been so noticeable in its once-through-the-typewriter blather and carelessness. Yes, the King byline will ensure a sizeable turnout, but the word will soon get around that the author of Carrie has this time churned out a ho-hum dud.

Pub Date: Aug. 16, 1979

ISBN: 0451155750

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1979

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

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Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.