A genuinely funny sendup of a much-lampooned industry.
In Leaf’s comedic murder mystery, a struggling actress finds a dreadful surprise in the trunk of her car.
Vincenza Morgan moves from a small town in Minnesota, hoping to start a grander life in Los Angeles, a “city of searchers” portrayed with lacerating wit by the author. The aspiring actress struggles, barely making ends meet working the cash register at a marijuana dispensary. She lands a big audition for a movie starring famous actress Reese Witherspoon, but just before she gets her chance to show what she can do, she discovers a corpse in the trunk of her car. The man has clearly been killed, and the murder weapon, a revolver, lies beside him. She recognizes the victim: Tom Selva, a fellow actor and a man with whom she was sometimes romantically involved. After her audition—it’s just too important to miss, even to report a murder—she wrestles with her predicament, as the evidence clearly implicates her in the crime. Vincenza comes to believes that she’s being followed by members of her cultlike church, the Church of Life, which promises its members access to “esoteric truths” and the establishment of a “new Eden.” She begins to suspect the church’s head, James Armstrong (who calls himself the “Supreme Pilot”), might have had something to do with Selva’s death, and she fears her own life is in danger—a state of affairs as chilling as it is morbidly funny, the signature style of the author. Leaf’s portrayal of show business in Los Angeles isn’t original at all—this is all well-covered ground—but the story is delightfully humorous, and the murder mystery is engrossing. The book is filled with hilarious insights, as in a description of incarceration: “In some ways jail was alike to a cruise ship. You tried to make friends. You were sickened by the food. You couldn’t jump out the windows.” This is lighthearted literary entertainment at its best—easily companionable, intelligent, and brimming with artful humor.
A genuinely funny sendup of a much-lampooned industry.Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781637587881
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Bombardier Books
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Everything you’d expect from Grisham, and this time something more.
After more than three decades of producing bestselling legal thrillers, Grisham tries his hand at a whodunit.
Eleanor Barnett wants Simon Latch to write her a will. That’s pretty much his job description, since practicing law in Braxton, Virginia, for 18 years hasn’t given him much opportunity to spread his wings. But the case of Netty, as she insists he call her, is different. She’s an 85-year-old widow whose second husband, Harry Korsak, left her with something like $20 million in cash and securities. She has a pair of stepsons, Clyde and Jerry Korsak, she’s determined to disinherit. And she already has a will, a document Wally Thackerman drafted a few weeks ago that basically allowed him, as Simon soon discovers, to pillage her estate. So instead of following his usual procedure and asking his longtime secretary, Matilda Clark, to type out the will, Simon types it himself and has it witnessed without saying anything to her. Of course he’d never do what Wally Thackerman did, but given his poverty, his gambling addiction, and his estrangement from his wife, Paula, whose income is a lot more stable than his own, he wouldn’t mind drawing just a bit on Netty’s wealth. As it happens, his new client turns out to be more trouble than she’s worth, maybe even more trouble than she would’ve been worth to Wally. And when she ends up dying, her death is swiftly identified as murder, with every indication that Simon killed her himself. The whodunit is unremarkable, but Grisham handles the legal complexities of the case with professional finesse and adds a wonderfully poignant portrait of a nothingburger lawyer trying his best to keep things more or less legal.
Everything you’d expect from Grisham, and this time something more.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9780385548984
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A standout in the series.
The sixth adventure of Harvard symbology professor Robert Langdon explores the mysteries of human consciousness, the demonic projects of the CIA, and the city of Prague.
“Ladies and gentlemen...we are about to experience a sea change in our understanding of how the brain works, the nature of consciousness, and in fact…the very nature of reality itself.” But first—Langdon’s in love! Brown’s devoted readers first met brilliant noetic scientist Katherine Solomon in The Lost Symbol (2009); she’s back as a serious girlfriend, engaging the committed bachelor in a way not seen before. The book opens with the pair in a luxurious suite at the Four Seasons in Prague. It’s the night after Katherine has delivered the lecture quoted above, setting the theme for the novel, which features a plethora of real-life cases and anomalies that seem to support the notion that human consciousness is not localized inside the human skull. Brown’s talent for assembling research is also evident in this novel’s alter ego as a guidebook to Prague, whose history and attractions are described in great and glowing detail. Whether you appreciate or skim past the innumerable info dumps on these and other topics (Jewish folklore fans—the Golem is in the house!), it goes without saying that concision is not a goal in the Dan Brown editing process. Speaking of editing, the nearly 700-page book is dedicated to Brown’s editor, who seems to appear as a character—to put it in the italicized form used for Brownian insight, Jason Kaufman must be Jonas Faukman! A major subplot involves the theft of Katherine’s manuscript from the secure servers of Penguin Random House; the delightful Faukman continues to spout witty wisecracks even when blindfolded and hogtied. There’s no shortage of action, derring-do, explosions, high-tech torture machines, attempted and successful murders, and opportunities for split-second, last-minute escapes; good thing Langdon, this aging symbology wonk, never misses swimming his morning laps. Readers who are not already dyed-in-the-wool Langdonites may find themselves echoing the prof’s own conclusion regarding the credibility of all this paranormal hoo-ha: At some point, skepticism itself becomes irrational.
A standout in the series.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9780385546898
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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