More of that gritty schmaltz about another new centurion — #4207, the honest if homely old kisser of Bumper Morgan, the "finest cop money can buy" (not really cash — a few cigars here, a little yogurt there). If you were to visualize this heart of gold under the badge of bronze proudly worn by the big, shambling man who's been on the L.A.P.D. force for twenty years, he might look a little like Victor McLaglen once did — or Jack Carson. He runs to fat and sweat. Bumper had been in the army for years and he's still a soldier — but on his own. He'll shut a mailbox lid hard on the hand of the snitch whose arm he's going to twist to get information; he'll show his softer side toward a youngster with a handful of bennies. And during this last week before he plans to retire and marry Cassie who calls him her Blue Knight, he's seen here and there — making a fool of himself with some young activists, testifying in court, saying goodbye to his old friend Cruz, etc. etc. until. . . . This once again has both the virtues and the weaknesses of the earlier book — the explicatory didacticism, the true true-blue dedication, the commanding detail and vernacular — and who's to guess whether it will have an equivalent readership over the same gun barrel.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1972
ISBN: 0316921467
Page Count: 220
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1971
A teenage girl is the strong center of a fever-dream story of hidden pasts.
In an Appalachian hamlet, a girl’s world is shattered by the secrets of the adults around her.
Burns’ first book, Cinderland (2014), was a memoir about her childhood in western Pennsylvania. She sets this assured debut novel nearby, in the remote hollers outside the ominously named Trap. It’s a minuscule, poverty-ridden West Virginia town where the dying coal industry still poisons the environment and the moonshiners of the title still make illegal liquor for tradition’s sake. At age 15, Wren Bird, who narrates much of the book, has never been more than a few miles from her family’s cabin. Her father, Briar, is a snake handler, a preacher whose services, held in an abandoned gas station for a shrinking congregation, revolve around him grasping his venomous rattlers and copperheads and raising them skyward while speaking in tongues. Wren tells the reader, “My father obeyed the rituals of snake-handling law, which meant he pretended we still lived in the 1940s instead of the age of the internet.” Called to God when a lightning strike blinded him in one eye as a teen, Briar fell in love with Wren’s mother, Ruby, not long afterward. He’s ruthlessly protective of his wife and daughter, forbidding most outside contact and only grudgingly letting Ruby home-school Wren. Ruby’s closest relationship is not with Briar but with her longtime friend Ivy, who lives down the mountain with her four kids and opioid-addicted husband. As girls, Ruby and Ivy dreamed of escape, but Ruby—also a snake handler’s daughter—married at her father’s command, and restless Ivy married so she wouldn’t have to leave Ruby. As the novel opens, Ivy falls into an open fire, but it seems Briar has worked a miracle when she suffers no grievous injury. That fall, though, sets off a cascade of revelations and rebellions. And Briar’s lethal snakes are this book’s version of Chekhov’s gun—you know they’re going to bite someone. Wren’s engaging, convincing voice leads the reader through her strange world.
A teenage girl is the strong center of a fever-dream story of hidden pasts.Pub Date: May 12, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-53364-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The book reads like a cheesy episode of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.
Love is challenging for any species—but things get more complicated when you’re a ghoul who wants to eat anyone who gets close to you.
In DeAngelis’ (Petty Magic, 2010, etc.) third novel, 16-year-old Maren is determined to track down her father after her mother, who clearly loves her but is scared for her own life, abandons her, leaving behind some money and the girl's birth certificate, which includes some important information: her father’s name. Maren started eating people when she was a little kid. She devoured the kind babysitter who showed her affection, and things only got worse from there. She ate a boy who befriended her at summer camp. She ate the son of her mother’s boss during a party. She ate other people. It isn’t until she sets out on the road to find her father that she finally meets one of her own kind. Sully is a talkative man, and there’s something a bit sinister about him, too. He weaves a rope out of hair from people he's eaten. Maren decides to find her dad by herself, and at a Wal-Mart in the middle of the country, she finally meets another cannibal closer to her own age. Lee is someone she quickly relates to. His first kill was his babysitter, too. But as she tells him: “I make friends…I just can’t keep them.” Lee joins Maren on her quest to find her father, and a good portion of the book is about their developing relationship. Even though there are entertaining moments, DeAngelis’ prose is run-of-the-mill and her observations, somewhat obvious.
The book reads like a cheesy episode of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-04650-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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