A swift, concise, and entertaining procedural with political overtones.
In this debut thriller, a couple of seemingly unrelated homicides in New York may be linked to a planned assassination.
Lt. Mark Stanton’s latest case is the murder of Wall Street billionaire Roger Decater Thornhill. Newell City cops found Thornhill with a bullet in his head, his body in an alley behind a primo apartment building. Mark and fellow detectives Pete McCurdy and Woody Weiss suspect a botched robbery, but later evidence suggests the killer only wanted it to appear as such. But a second murder in the area with the same M.O. is confounding: that of patent lawyer Barbara Frontiori, who has no discernible tie to Thornhill. Adding to the complications is FBI Special Agent Adam Pierce, who informs the detectives of an assassination plot against U.S. Sen. Aaron Ross. Ross has been responsible for legislation cracking down on anti-government, quasi-military assemblies, much like the dubious groups the feds have connected to Thornhill. Mark, et. al., look into the Einstein World Future Group, a London-based organization that fosters world peace, of which Thornhill was a member. While cops continue searching for the common denominator between the murders, the would-be assassin is already in New York, with an objective—and gun—aimed directly at the senator. Glavin’s short novel sets a brisk pace from the beginning, with Mark quickly initiating the investigation. The narrative is largely dialogue, which is appropriate, as the detectives kick around different theories. Such a devotion to the procedural aspect does forgo nuance (Mark’s, Pete’s, and Woody’s personal lives are relatively unknown), but fans of action surely won’t mind. The story likewise precipitates suspense with well-established scenes, including all the particulars of an event (where an assassination may take place) and the killer standing out in the crowd (for readers, at least) with a conspicuous feature. Glavin really only falters with some inconsistencies, namely the organization’s inexplicably alternating name: the Einstein Future World Group, the Einstein Free World, and the Einstein World Peace Group.
A swift, concise, and entertaining procedural with political overtones.Pub Date: May 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4918-0765-1
Page Count: 136
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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