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TEN NORTH FREDERICK

A new novel is in a direct line of descent from A Rage to Live, and is not only an exhaustive exposition of the lives behind the solid brownstone and mahogany respectability of Ten North Frederick, but also a close cross-section of Gibbsville, Pennsylvania. O'Hara who does for this world much that Fitzgerald did for an earlier society- (and Marquand today for still another sphere) assembles the dossier on this town with all its tattletale social stigmata and inflections; the outward show of solidity, the private discontent and disaffection; the inheritance of money and social unassailability which cannot compensate for the threadbare spiritual satisfactions. This is particularly true of Joe Chapin, who lived his life at this address, only to know at the end how little he had gotten out of it. This is the chronology of that life from birth to death along with that of other leading citizens of Gibbsville; its banker, doctor, judge, newspaperman, his friend and partner in a law firm- Arthur, along with some- on the way up- and others who like Joe, stood still. His marriage to Edith offered no warmth, just the pride of possession (hers) and an exemplary display of uxorious devotion; his naive sortie into politics ended with the knowledge that he had wanted a few years and a little more money; and it was one night spent- and never forgotten- with a friend of his daughter's which returned him to Gibbsville with the realization of all he had never found- and to the quiet, steady drinking which was to take his life.... An explicit- and in many ways- expert documentation, there will be many readers for whom this will have a tremendous recognition value to assure a solid audience.

Pub Date: Nov. 24, 1955

ISBN: 0881841730

Page Count: 408

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: Oct. 3, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1955

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THE A LIST

Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...

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A convicted killer’s list of five people he wants dead runs the gamut from the wife he’s already had murdered to franchise heroine Ali Reynolds.

Back in the day, women came from all over to consult Santa Clarita fertility specialist Dr. Edward Gilchrist. Many of them left his care happily pregnant, never dreaming that the father of the babies they carried was none other than the physician himself, who donated his own sperm rather than that of the handsome, athletic, disease-free men pictured in his scrapbook. When Alexandra Munsey’s son, Evan, is laid low by the kidney disease he’s inherited from his biological father and she returns to Gilchrist in search of the donor’s medical records, the roof begins to fall in on him. By the time it’s done falling, he’s serving a life sentence in Folsom Prison for commissioning the death of his wife, Dawn, the former nurse and sometime egg donor who’d turned on him. With nothing left to lose, Gilchrist tattoos himself with the initials of five people he blames for his fall: Dawn; Leo Manuel Aurelio, the hit man he’d hired to dispose of her; Kaitlyn Todd, the nurse/receptionist who took Dawn’s place; Alex Munsey, whose search for records upset his apple cart; and Ali Reynolds, the TV reporter who’d helped put Alex in touch with the dozen other women who formed the Progeny Project because their children looked just like hers. No matter that Ali’s been out of both California and the news business for years; Gilchrist and his enablers know that revenge can’t possibly be served too cold. Wonder how far down that list they’ll get before Ali, aided once more by Frigg, the methodical but loose-cannon AI first introduced in Duel to the Death (2018), turns on them?

Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how little the boundary-challenged AI, who gets into the case more or less inadvertently, differs from your standard human sidekick with issues.

Pub Date: April 2, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-5011-5101-9

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019

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MIDNIGHT BAYOU

Agreeably credible lovers and a neat piece of home-restoration compensate some for the hokey hauntings on the bayou. Loyal...

A gumbo seasoned with ghosts, love, and murder on the bayou.

When 30-something Declan Fitzgerald of Boston, a successful lawyer and a member of a large and loving family, breaks off his engagement to very suitable Jessica, he knows he needs to change his life. Lawyering is not fun anymore, so, recalling Manet Hall, an old deserted plantation house he once visited with law school classmate and New Orleans native Remy, he buys the property and moves down south. Declan is also a gifted craftsman, a born decorator, and very, very rich. Soon, he meets beautiful Lena, who’s visiting her grandmother Odette, Declan’s friendly Cajun neighbor. Declan is as certain that Lena is destined to be his wife as he was that Manet Hall would become his home. But, surprise, Lena has a troubled past (like the house) and is determined to resist Declan’s courtship. While he suits Lena and works on the place, Declan experiences troubling dreams. It seems he’s actually reliving the novel’s parallel story, which took place in 1899. In that year, the maid, Abbey Manet (from whom Lena, coincidentally, is descended, and who married wealthy Lucian Manet), was raped and murdered by her brother-in-law Julian as she nursed her baby daughter. Her body was dumped into the bayou by her mother-in-law, who despised her. And grief-stricken husband Lucian, away at the time, being told that Abbey had run off, committed suicide. Now, in an unconvincing twist of gender and reincarnation, it’s Declan who hears a baby crying , experiences childbirth and rape as the reincarnation of Abbey, while Lena is Lucian. The two accept all this with equanimity, and, Manet Hall’s secrets revealed, it becomes the setting for predictable and much foreshadowed resolutions.

Agreeably credible lovers and a neat piece of home-restoration compensate some for the hokey hauntings on the bayou. Loyal fans will enjoy.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-399-14824-8

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2001

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