Perky, aspiring newscaster Suzanne Maretto persuades her teenaged lover and his buddy to kill her straight-arrow husband; just deserts follow for all. Suzanne, who thinks that ``if people could just be on TV all the time, the whole human race would probably be a much better group of individuals,'' sets out to captivate the none-too-bright kids she's interviewing for a demo tape that'll get her out of her local (suburban Boston) station and onto the network fast track. There's Jimmy Emmet, who worships her as stupidly as does her hapless restaurant-family husband Larry; Russell Hines, who's just in it for the thousand dollars; and Lydia Mertz, who's so hopelessly smitten with Suzanne's big-sister glamour that she's willing to supply the gun. But the real culprits, as bestselling author/media-child Maynard (Baby Love, 1981; Domestic Affairs, 1987, etc.) keeps screaming in an amusingly flat series of self-revealing monologues, are Malibu Barbie, Victoria's Secret, Wheel of Fortune, abusive (or adoring) parents, and Donahue—all the accoutrements of cut-rate acculturation that give her characters such venal dreams and mindless determination. Maynard's ear for sincere garbage (``We're so connected, I can taste her Tic Tac,'' boasts Jimmy after Suzanne deflowers him) is as sharp as ever, but after 50 pages of such homogeneous stuff you'll start looking for the exit—unless, of course, your own taste for pulp romances of sex, power, and violence are just as depraved as the ones so lovingly excoriated here. What's most offensive here, as in Bret Easton Ellis's notorious American Psycho, is the raised-nostril pretense that this revolted attack on pop culture, already due for serialization in Penthouse, stands above it all. A more penetrating writer could have a field day analyzing recent popular fiction's disavowal of the tawdry culture that continues to grip it as tightly as Suzanne holds Jimmy.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-525-93396-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1991
Though Christie fans may be particularly delighted, this propulsive, pitch-perfect thriller has something for everyone.
A group of friends at a British college, all connected to the same charismatic scholar of Agatha Christie’s work, are torn apart by secrets and deceptions.
When Jess Walker begins to contemplate going to college, there is only one clear choice: She has to attend the university where Dr. Lorna Clay teaches. Lorna is the author of The Truants, a brilliant work arguing that great artists must destroy their personal lives to create, which has captured Jess’ imagination ever since she was given the book by her uncle. Once Jess starts college in East Anglia, she strikes up a friendship with Georgie, a wealthy socialite with a proclivity to dipping into her mother’s pill drawer; Alec, a 20-something white South African journalist on fellowship at the university; and Nick, a geology student who quickly falls for Jess. A middle child from a farming village, Jess instantly feels her life become more vibrant in the company of her exotic companions. And at the head of it all is the brilliant Lorna, who permeates the boundaries of their lives as students to attend their parties and become their confidante and, eventually, their friend, especially to Jess, who wants to follow in Lorna’s footsteps professionally and personally. But as the relationships among the five become more and more tangled, a tragedy suddenly shatters their lives, forcing Jess to confront the illusory nature of really knowing another. Aside from some slight plausibility issues (if only teenagers’ lives were changed by works of literary scholarship!), Weinberg has written one of the best thriller debuts in recent years, with all the cleverness of Ruth Ware (and, yes, even Christie herself) and a dash of Donna Tartt’s edgy darkness.
Though Christie fans may be particularly delighted, this propulsive, pitch-perfect thriller has something for everyone.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-54196-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
The setup is so patient and the logistics so matter-of-fact that even the savviest readers will be caught in the story’s...
The FBI hires an aging child actor to go undercover in a West Virginia prison to extract vital information from a convicted money launderer who’d rather keep his head down.
Tommy Jump’s best days onstage are probably behind him. At 27, he’s too old to play children or even teenagers. But as his old schoolmate Danny Ruiz, who’s now with the FBI, assures him, he’s not too old to earn a fat paycheck by playing the role of Peter Lenfest Goodrich, the high school history teacher who reacted to a bank’s plans to foreclose on his mortgage by robbing the bank and then getting caught. Danny is convinced that Tommy’s just the person to worm himself into the confidence of Mitchell Dupree, whose job as an executive in the Latin American division at Union South Bank was seriously compromised when he laundered millions for El Vio, the fearsome, half-blind boss of the New Colima Cartel. Mitch has a wife and two children just beginning the long wait outside for him to serve his time, and although he’s arranged for the documentary evidence he assembled against El Vio to be turned over to the authorities if anything untoward happens to him, he’s not about to upset the apple cart by talking out of turn—unless of course it’s to innocuous Pete Goodrich, who’ll be serving time alongside him in the minimum security Morgantown Prison as soon as he pleads guilty and bids a tearful farewell to Amanda Porter, Tommy’s actual fiancee, who’s just found out she’s pregnant. After all, Tommy’s been acting professionally for most of his life, and the FBI will spring him on a moment’s notice if he gets into trouble, so what could possibly go wrong? Fans of Parks’ well-oiled thrillers (Closer than You Know, 2018, etc.) won’t even bother to ask; they’ll be too busy licking their chops anticipating the twists that are bound to come.
The setup is so patient and the logistics so matter-of-fact that even the savviest readers will be caught in the story’s expertly laid traps before they know what’s happening.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4353-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
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