In Ruby’s (Weeping Water, 2016) thriller, twin brothers’ lives are irrevocably changed when they cross paths with a serial killer.
When their parents separate in 1976, Ben and Owen Hood leave their Nashville home with their mom, Karen. The teenagers quickly adapt to and cherish Karen’s family farm in Alabama. But things take a frightening turn when they explore a cornfield, though Ben’s secret purpose is tracking a mysterious set of footprints. The brothers unfortunately encounter and flee from Eli Crisp, a serial killer who’s evaded authorities for years. Eli captures but doesn’t immediately kill them. After Ben and Owen attempt an escape, only one brother gets away, leaving Eli to abscond with his remaining captive. Meanwhile, Simon Singleton, a detective and British expat in Montana, is obsessed with identifying the serial killer. But he can’t even convince his superiors that one exists, as Eli’s M.O. involves seemingly random victims. When certain the killer is in Alabama, Simon asks for time off and heads south. Determined to put a face and a name to the serial murderer, he may have an ally in the Hood brother who got away, as both of them believe the other twin is still alive and under the thumb of a dangerous, prolific killer. Ruby’s lengthy novel covers years that ultimately reach the 1980s. It’s ample space for meticulous character development, including backstory about Eli’s troubled childhood and the brothers’ relationships with their often indifferent father. The story astutely addresses issues of racism, as, it seems, cops aren’t searching for Eli’s captive because the twins, like Simon, are black. Eli is terrifying, primarily due to his calculatedness; he wants to be famous and, on learning that Simon is pursuing him, taunts the detective with a signed letter promising another murder. Disappointingly, female characters merely help to drive the male-dominated storylines (as romantic interests, for example); tenacious, shrewd Karen is an exception. Overall, Ruby’s unadorned writing unflinchingly befits the story’s frequent bleakness while allowing for humor, such as a recurring joke involving people who think expat Simon’s lilt is Australian.
Dark, enthralling examination of a murderer and his victims, even those who survive.Pub Date: Dec. 31, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-65377-366-4
Page Count: 475
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
Did you like this book?
Hannah’s sequel to Firefly Lane (2008) demonstrates that those who ignore family history are often condemned to repeat it.
When we last left Kate and Tully, the best friends portrayed in Firefly Lane, the friendship was on rocky ground. Now Kate has died of cancer, and Tully, whose once-stellar TV talk show career is in free fall, is wracked with guilt over her failure to be there for Kate until her very last days. Kate’s death has cemented the distrust between her husband, Johnny, and daughter Marah, who expresses her grief by cutting herself and dropping out of college to hang out with goth poet Paxton. Told mostly in flashbacks by Tully, Johnny, Marah and Tully’s long-estranged mother, Dorothy, aka Cloud, the story piles up disasters like the derailment of a high-speed train. Increasingly addicted to prescription sedatives and alcohol, Tully crashes her car and now hovers near death, attended by Kate’s spirit, as the other characters gather to see what their shortsightedness has wrought. We learn that Tully had tried to parent Marah after her father no longer could. Her hard-drinking decline was triggered by Johnny’s anger at her for keeping Marah and Paxton’s liaison secret. Johnny realizes that he only exacerbated Marah’s depression by uprooting the family from their Seattle home. Unexpectedly, Cloud, who rebuffed Tully’s every attempt to reconcile, also appears at her daughter’s bedside. Sixty-nine years old and finally sober, Cloud details for the first time the abusive childhood, complete with commitments to mental hospitals and electroshock treatments, that led to her life as a junkie lowlife and punching bag for trailer-trash men. Although powerful, Cloud’s largely peripheral story deflects focus away from the main conflict, as if Hannah was loath to tackle the intractable thicket in which she mired her main characters.
Unrelenting gloom relieved only occasionally by wrenching trauma; somehow, though, Hannah’s storytelling chops keep the pages turning even as readers begin to resent being drawn into this masochistic morass.Pub Date: April 23, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-312-57721-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
Did you like this book?
High-stakes weepmeister Sparks (A Walk to Remember, 1999, etc.) opts for a happy ending his fourth time out. His writing has improved—though it's still the equivalent of paint-by-numbers—and he makes use this time of at least a vestige of credible psychology.
That vestige involves the deep dark secret—it has something to do with his father's death when son Taylor was nine—that haunts kind, good 36-year-old local contractor Taylor McAden and makes him withdraw from relationships whenever they start getting serious enough to maybe get permanent. He's done this twice before, and now he does it again with pretty and sweet single mother Denise Holton, age 29, who's moved from Atlanta to Taylor's town of Edenton, North Carolina, in order to devote her time more fully to training her four-year-old son Kyle to overcome the peculiar impediment he has that keeps him from achieving normal language acquisition. Okay? When Denise has a car accident in a bad storm, she's rescued by volunteer fireman Taylor—who also rescues little Kyle after he wanders away from his injured mom in the storm. Love blooms in the weeks that follow—until Taylor suddenly begins putting on the brakes. What is it that holds him back, when there just isn't any question but that he loves Denise and vice versa-not to mention that he's "great" with Kyle, just like a father? It will require a couple of near-death experiences (as fireman Taylor bravely risks his life to save others); emotional steadiness from the intelligent, good, true Denise; and the terrible death of a dear and devoted friend before Taylor will come to the point at last of confiding to Denise the terrible memory of how his father died—and the guilt that's been its legacy to Taylor. The psychological dam broken, love will at last be able to flow.
More Hallmarkiana, from a shameless expert in the genre.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2000
ISBN: 0-446-52550-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2000
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
Did you like this book?
© Copyright 2021 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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.
