An overly complicated mystery with an engaging protagonist.
After a man is murdered in a Halloween haunted house, a psychic Midwest lawyer investigates the killing in this sixth installment of a series.
Thirty-year-old Megan Docket, an attorney in tiny Dexter, Nebraska, specializes in estate planning, but—as described in five previous novels—she has found herself investigating and solving criminal cases, most recently a double murder, and has killed many times in self-defense. She’s helped by a warm community of friends and family and by the supernatural: Megan is warned of danger by presentiments and voices she hears in the winds scouring the dry bluffs near her house. As the book opens, Megan is still traumatized by recent events, such as the loss of her unborn child, and is troubled by problems in her new marriage to Jay Young, a lieutenant in the State Patrol. In need of distraction, she agrees to help plan a haunted house for Halloween. Finally open to the public, the house becomes the site of a murder, and the sheriff arrests the wrong man. Megan and her allies set out to find the truth, leading to a dangerous confrontation with the real killers—who hold her mother and Docket Law employees hostage. To outwit them, Megan will need to muster her associates and mount a daring rescue. Bruce (Game Six, 2018, etc.) provides, as always, a strong sense of place, diverse characters, and a twisty mystery. The main investigation story is rounded out by domestic concerns, such as Megan’s worries about her new marriage. Contradictions in her character make her a complex subject, one as likely to protect herself with deadly force as to generously help others. But these strengths become overwhelmed by the tale’s giant plethora of names and relationships, which (even with effective exposition) overtake the storytelling, slow the pace, and burden readers with attempts to keep things straight. Book 5 provided a cast list, but this one has no such memory aid. In addition, the voices-in-the-wind plot element becomes a little tired, even perfunctory, in this outing, which doesn’t live up to previous volumes.
An overly complicated mystery with an engaging protagonist.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-68731-846-6
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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