An enjoyable ensemble cast skillfully beefs up an uncomplicated crime plot; a quick, fun read with unsavory secondary...
In this third volume of a mystery series, Eleanor and President Franklin D. Roosevelt vacation at a therapeutic retreat in Warm Springs, Georgia.
In Durham and Smith’s (The President’s Birthday Ball Affair, 2018, etc.) latest installment, it is July 1935. A black woman named Nell Gaines is locked up in Milledgeville’s state prison farm for having attacked her abusive husband with a knife. Her fate is about to change because Wilton Biggs, a prominent white citizen of Greenville, Georgia, needs a cook. In exchange for an envelope of cash, the warden grants Nell parole and hands her over to Biggs. Cooking is not the only thing Biggs wants from Nell. Months later, disaster strikes when Biggs’ 17-year-old son, Robert, finds his father in bed with Nell. Enraged, Robert grabs a machete and swings wildly. Biggs is killed; Robert runs away; and Nell is arrested and convicted of murder. She is sentenced to death. Enter Mrs. Roosevelt. In May 1936, the Roosevelts, accompanied by the president’s private secretary, Marguerite “Missy” LeHand, arrive at the “Little White House” in Warm Springs. The first lady reads about Nell’s plight in the local paper and decides she must visit the prison herself and see whether the convict has been treated fairly. Meanwhile, aggressive Hollywood reporter Joan Roswell coincidentally finds herself visiting Warm Springs at the invitation of young movie star Ida Lupino. The series-defining Hollywood-Washington connection is now established. Add in Missy’s assistant Grace Tully and handsome FBI agent Corey Wainwright and the whole gang is back together, taking readers on another vivid and engaging visit to the 1930s, this time focusing on the Jim Crow South. Gone with the Wind author Margaret Mitchell provides the episode’s celebrity cameo appearance. Although readers know the identity of the murderer, the race to save Nell from the electric chair supplies enough tension to propel the fast-paced narrative forward. Despite the underlying seriousness in theme, the breezy prose is filled with humorous interludes, and the portrait of an indefatigable and earnest Mrs. Roosevelt is delightful.
An enjoyable ensemble cast skillfully beefs up an uncomplicated crime plot; a quick, fun read with unsavory secondary characters and salient historical tidbits.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 299
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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