A bonanza for fans of psychological suspense but a dud for devotees of detection.
This year’s look at what Penzler calls the “extremes of human behavior caused by despair, hate, greed, fear, envy, insanity, or love—sometimes in combination.”
Although their behavior may be extreme, most of the stories’ characters are pretty ordinary folk. A museum worker forms an attachment to a prisoner in Rebecca McKanna’s “Interpreting American Gothic.” Teachers behave badly in Joyce Carol Oates’ “The Archivist” and Robert Hinderliter’s “Coach O.” A real estate agent has evil intentions in Mark Mayer’s “The Clown.” A dog walker learns the consequences of punching above his weight in Suzanne Proulx’s “If You Say So.” One runaway bride flees to Ireland in Anne Therese Macdonald’s “That Donnelly Crowd,” and a second is shaken by finding an abducted child in Amanda Rea’s “Faint of Heart.” Family conflict remains popular. A father and daughter learn the consequences of spending custodial visits pretending to be home buyers in Reed Johnson’s “Open House.” A divorced mother struggles to control her teenage daughter in Jennifer McMahon’s “Hannah-Beast.” A family of Europeans has a bad habit of drowning in Sharon Hunt’s “The Keeper of All Sins.” A black-sheep uncle attempts to console his grieving nephew in Brian Panowich’s “A Box of Hope.” And a widow tries to save her family from an invading army in Ron Rash’s “Neighbors.” No cops (one ex-cop haunts the subway in Arthur Klepchukov’s “A Damn Fine Town”), one robber (the hero of Robb T. White’s “Inside Man”). Leaning more on Freud than Conan Doyle, Lethem’s 20 selections highlight the angst of the everyday.
A bonanza for fans of psychological suspense but a dud for devotees of detection.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-328-63609-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
The relaxed and reigning king of beach music, who most recently told Tales From Margaritaville (1989), tries his hand at a relaxed and rambling novel. It's about seaplanes, a pretty girl, a vanished rock star, the curse of jet skis, a magic scepter, disrupters of paradise, and conch burgers. Joe Merchant, of the title, is the missing, presumed dead rock star whose sister Trevor Kane has returned to Florida to enlist her old lover Frank Bama to check out rumors of Merchant's survival. Trevor left Frank, a Vietnam vet who would rather fly than get serious, years ago because he seemed to love his ancient seaplane more than he loved her. Frank's doughty seaplane, however, is just what she needs to go in search of someone named Desdemona, who might be somewhere in the Caribbean. There is a Desdemona, and she does have a psychic link to the missing musician. She's been getting extrasensory messages for months. Also on the trail of Mr. Merchant and Desdemona are trash journalist Rudy Breno and one- armed, archvillainous soldier-of-fortune Colonel Cairo. Colonel Cairo is obsessed with the restoration of his missing arm, a task requiring a missing crystal. Desdemona might know something about that. The searches are Florida-intense, which is to say that there is plenty of time for subplots about Frank's chum who has been blowing up the jet skis that make paradise too noisy, and about a coldblooded killer with eyeballs tattooed on his eyelids who's not, after all, a subplot. So laid-back and rambling it's perilously close to sloppy, but Buffett's considerable charms as a performer and goof-off artist keep things afloat. The uninitiated may be baffled; his fans will be enchanted.
Pub Date: Aug. 10, 1992
ISBN: 0-15-196296-0
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fast-paced mystery that provides a chilling look at how difficult it is to get rid of a stalker.
A librarian and her friends must solve a murder to ensure that she’ll live long enough to get married.
Lindsey Norris and her fiance, Capt. Mike Sullivan, are planning a small wedding on one of the Thumb Islands near the town of Briar Creek, Connecticut, where Lindsey is the library director and Sully runs a charter boat business (Hitting the Books, 2018, etc.). All Lindsey’s plans are jeopardized by an innocuous middle-aged man who turns up at the library seeking information on roses. New to the area, Aaron Grady fears that his rose garden won’t survive the drought that’s searing the area. In response to Lindsey’s assistance, Grady sends her a thank-you note. Then he turns up with a bunch of roses, waiting two hours and quizzing the staff, who all agree that he seems unnaturally fixated on her. When Grady turns up at her house with more roses, she firmly tells him their relationship is limited to that of a librarian and a library patron. Apparently shocked, he leaves her, her friend Beth, and Beth’s husband, Aidan, whom she called before opening the door, to explain to an annoyed Sully what’s been going on. Grady continues to stalk Lindsey, even watching her try on wedding dresses. Sully and Robbie Vine, an actor who knows a thing or two about stalkers, teach the library staff some self-defense moves, and Robbie’s girlfriend, police chief Emma Plewicki, adds a few tips, but nobody can stop Grady from making Lindsey’s life hell. The stalking ends only when Grady turns up dead outside the library, leaving Lindsey and Sully prime suspects. Grady’s wife, Sylvia, accuses Lindsey of trying to steal her husband and Sully of murdering him. It will take all the research skills of Lindsey and her staff to uncover the real motive for the murder.
A fast-paced mystery that provides a chilling look at how difficult it is to get rid of a stalker.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-10003-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
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