A slow immersion into chaos that’s torture for the protagonist but sheer enjoyment for readers.
In Baskin’s debut thriller, a prison psychiatrist becomes a patsy for a white supremacist gang leader looking for a way out of jail.
Dr. Jojo Black sees his new job at Wampanoag State Hospital, run by the Massachusetts Department of Corrections, as a definite challenge. He’d make more money in a private psychiatric practice, but he prefers working with criminals despite the fact that his first patient at WSH nearly attacks him for not providing him with oxycodone. Jojo’s predecessor boils the job down to separating the truly mentally ill inmates from those who are simply faking it, because the state hospital is considered a vacation compared with maximum security. Hard-to-read patient Lester Manson, leader of the white supremacy group White Dawn, resides in the high-security unit known as “the Shoe.” Jojo thinks that Lester seems “pleasant and calm,” contrary to his own boss’s warnings. But soon after Jojo settles into a routine and starts dating social worker Margot, the trouble begins. Lester persuades Margot to sneak him a cellphone, and he uses this criminal act to blackmail Jojo into doing his bidding. At first, the psychiatrist merely ensures that a few select inmates remain at the hospital. But as rumors of a gang war heat up (White Dawn vs. Los Reyes), some people outside WSH, including a U.S. Marshal, confront Jojo, convinced that he’s helping Lester plan a prison break. In the end, the psychiatrist may have to choose between telling the truth or aiding in Lester’s escape. Baskin’s novel has a worthy buildup before spinning off into a gleefully complex conspiracy. There are numerous characters with agendas: some want Lester free, some want him to stay right where he is, and others apparently want him dead. The tale is suspenseful right from the opening, which shows Jojo in the middle of a prison riot before flashing back to his relatable first-day jitters. Still, the book’s villain isn’t quite the mastermind that other characters make him out to be; Jojo’s boss, for example, asserts that Lester can get into a seasoned clinician’s head, but what he actually does is less manipulation than basic intimidation, sometimes involving physical threats. On the plus side, Jojo comes across as a smart man who, despite his stumbles, isn’t as naïve as some suggest.
A slow immersion into chaos that’s torture for the protagonist but sheer enjoyment for readers.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5347-0256-1
Page Count: 234
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A grim and unbearably tense debut chiller with an unexpected and utterly fitting finale.
A lonely British schoolteacher falls for an American man incarcerated for the murder of a young woman. What could possibly go wrong?
Samantha, 31, is still reeling from a bad breakup when she discovers Framing the Truth: The Murder of Holly Michaels, an 18-year-old true-crime documentary about the killing of a young girl by then-18-year-old Dennis Danson, aka the suspected Red River Killer, who’s still on death row in Florida’s Altoona Prison. Sam writes to Dennis, and soon they’re declaring their love for each other. Sam flies to the U.S. to meet him, and although they’re separated by plexiglass, she knows that she’s found the love of her life. The chirpy Carrie, who co-produced and directed the first documentary, is Sam’s guide while she’s there, and Sam accompanies her while they film a new series about Dennis, A Boy from Red River. Sam and Dennis quickly marry when new evidence comes to light and Dennis is exonerated and released. Amid a whirlwind of talk shows, celebrity attention, and the new series premiere, married life isn’t quite what Sam had hoped for: intimacy is nonexistent, the already self-loathing Sam feels unloved and unwanted, and the appearance of Dennis’ clingy childhood friend Lindsay Durst sends Sam into a jealous fit. After Dennis’ father dies, they move into Dennis’ childhood home, and Sam begins to suspect he may be hiding something. After all, what actually happened to all those other missing girls? Refreshingly, Lloyd seems absolutely unconcerned with whether or not her characters are likable, and although a few British sayings ("round," “in hospital”) make their way into the dialogue of the American characters, her research into the aftereffects of long incarceration is obvious, and her portrait of an emotionally damaged woman feels spot-on.
A grim and unbearably tense debut chiller with an unexpected and utterly fitting finale.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-335-95240-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
Magnificent writing, nonetheless, makes the best case yet for putting McCarthy on a pedestal just below the one occupied by...
Almost as frustrating as it is commanding, McCarthy’s ninth (and first since the completion of his Border Trilogy: Cities of the Plain, 1998, etc.) is a formidable display of stunningly written scenes that don’t quite cohere into a fully satisfying narrative.
It’s a bleak chronicle of murder, revenge and implacable fate pocked with numerous echoes of McCarthy’s great Blood Meridian (1985). Here, the story’s set in 1980 in southern Texas near the Mexican border, where aging Sheriff Bell, a decorated WWII veteran, broods heroically over the territory he’s sworn to protect, while—in a superb, sorrowful monologue—acknowledging the omnipresence of ineradicable evil all around him. Then the focus trains itself on Vietnam vet Llewellyn Moss, a hunter who stumbles upon several dead bodies, a stash of Mexican heroin and more than $2 million in cash that he absconds with. The tale then leaps among the hunted (Moss), an escaped killer (Anton Chigurh), whose crimes include double-crossing the drug cartel from which the money was taken, the Army Special Forces freelancer (Carson Wells) hired by druglords and—in dogged pursuit of all the horrors spawned by their several interactions—the intrepid, however flawed and guilty, stoical Sheriff Bell: perhaps the most fully human and sympathetic character McCarthy has ever created. The justly praised near-biblical style, an artful fusion of brisk declarative sentences and vivid, simple images, confers horrific intensity on the escalating violence and chaos, while precisely dramatizing the sense of nemesis that pursues and punishes McCarthy’s characters (scorpions in a sealed bottle). But this eloquent melodrama is seriously weakened by its insufficiently varied reiterated message: “if you were Satan . . . tryin to bring the human race to its knees, what you would probably come up with is narcotics.”
Magnificent writing, nonetheless, makes the best case yet for putting McCarthy on a pedestal just below the one occupied by William Faulkner.Pub Date: July 25, 2005
ISBN: 0-375-40677-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
IN THE NEWS
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
