Sturdy mystery and rousing gunfights in a sequel that transcends its predecessor.
In the second Funderburk (The Fish House Gang, 2013) thriller featuring Charles “Chic” Sparks, the crime-fighting Florida psychologist takes on a crime syndicate threatening him and his love, Suzy.
Chic’s work as a profiler for law enforcement had previously put him on a case of murders, which he attributed to a criminal enterprise. This is how he met Suzy, who was in danger at the time as a potential witness. But neither he nor Suzy is safe. Chic hasn’t yet identified the enterprise; but he took out a member or two, so they may be out for revenge. Suzy’s periodic-jailbird cousin, Buck Chapman, puts Chic in touch with one of his criminal cohorts in Louisiana. Chic gets the names and locations of two individuals and, along with a Spanish-speaking detective, heads south to investigate in Mexico. Both men are soon pursued by thugs. It seems the bad guys are a step ahead, and Chic suspects a leak. As the syndicate slowly becomes more discernible, he works at dismantling it—a life-threatening task. Although the Fish House Gang (Chic’s poker pals) is disappointingly absent, Funderburk’s sophomore effort improves on the first. Like last time, the many characters are vibrant—whether they’re allies or adversaries. But females in this novel are much more distinctive, particularly villains. Judith, for example, is a proficient Colombian assassin whom the syndicate hires to hit a rival cartel’s banker; her results are memorably explosive. The author easily keeps the story moving with so many perspectives but does allow for contemplative moments: “But now the day was dying, leaving a sadness in his soul at the gradual loss of light.” A satisfying conclusion hints at another installment.
Sturdy mystery and rousing gunfights in a sequel that transcends its predecessor.Pub Date: July 27, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4808-5017-0
Page Count: 140
Publisher: Archway Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Originally published in German in 1962 and touted more recently as a feminist's Robinson Crusoe, this somber classic from prize-winner Haushofer chronicles the experiences of a (nameless) woman cut off from her familiar city ways in a remote hunting lodge, after Armageddon has snuffed out all life in the world beyond. With the woman's diary of activities during the first two years of isolation as foundation, the story assumes the shape and flavor of a journal. Saved from instant death by a transparent, apparently indestructible wall enclosing a substantial area of forest and alpine meadow, the woman finds relief from her isolation in companionship offered by a dog, a cat, kittens, and a cow and her calf, making them into a family that she cares for faithfully and frets over incessantly with each season's new challenges. Crops of potatoes, beans, and hay are harvested in sufficient quantity to keep all alive, with deer providing occasional meat for the table, but the satisfaction of having survived long winters and a halcyon summer is undone by a second sudden and equally devastating catastrophe, which triggers the need in her to tell her story. Although heavy with the repetition of daily chores, the account is also intensely introspective, probing as deeply into the psyche of the woman as it does into her world, which circumstances have placed in a new light. Subtly surreal, by turns claustrophobic and exhilarating, fixated with almost religious fervor on banal detail, this is a disturbing yet rewarding tale in which survival and femininity are strikingly merged. Not for macho readers.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-939416-53-0
Page Count: 244
Publisher: Cleis
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
A strange, subtle, and haunting novel.
A financier's Ponzi scheme unravels to disastrous effect, revealing the unexpected connections among a cast of disparate characters.
How did Vincent Smith fall overboard from a container ship near the coast of Mauritania, fathoms away from her former life as Jonathan Alkaitis' pretend trophy wife? In this long-anticipated follow-up to Station Eleven (2014), Mandel uses Vincent's disappearance to pick through the wreckage of Alkaitis' fraudulent investment scheme, which ripples through hundreds of lives. There's Paul, Vincent's half brother, a composer and addict in recovery; Olivia, an octogenarian painter who invested her retirement savings in Alkaitis' funds; Leon, a former consultant for a shipping company; and a chorus of office workers who enabled Alkaitis and are terrified of facing the consequences. Slowly, Mandel reveals how her characters struggle to align their stations in life with their visions for what they could be. For Vincent, the promise of transformation comes when she's offered a stint with Alkaitis in "the kingdom of money." Here, the rules of reality are different and time expands, allowing her to pursue video art others find pointless. For Alkaitis, reality itself is too much to bear. In his jail cell, he is confronted by the ghosts of his victims and escapes into "the counterlife," a soothing alternate reality in which he avoided punishment. It's in these dreamy sections that Mandel's ideas about guilt and responsibility, wealth and comfort, the real and the imagined, begin to cohere. At its heart, this is a ghost story in which every boundary is blurred, from the moral to the physical. How far will Alkaitis go to deny responsibility for his actions? And how quickly will his wealth corrupt the ambitions of those in proximity to it? In luminous prose, Mandel shows how easy it is to become caught in a web of unintended consequences and how disastrous it can be when such fragile bonds shatter under pressure.
A strange, subtle, and haunting novel.Pub Date: March 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-52114-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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