Bodies keep piling up and things keep getting worse for Detective Scott, but readers will smile (and shiver) right to the...
A gay cop investigates a string of murders as he puts his own life back together in this winning debut novel.
Nick Scott is a crackerjack Chicago police detective and the host of the city’s newest morning show, The Gay Detective, in which he interviews a different gay celebrity each week. When his first guest, author Harold Sapoti, is found dead, slumped over a stool (“The perp had placed Harold’s book on his butt, so that the first thing you saw was the title, Bottoms Up”), it looks like a clear-cut hate crime. But when other people close to Nick start turning up with their throats slashed and his own house is set ablaze, things look more personal. Then someone trashes the studio where Nick films his show and he discovers a dire warning: “a photo of my face marked with a large block red X that said YOU’RE NEXT!” As Detective Scott’s life deteriorates dramatically around him, he finds himself sharing a house with his new partner, the sweet-natured, heterosexual slob Detective Norm Malone; to put it mildly, they have very different views on housekeeping. With the help of Norm, Nick’s boss Lt. Brodsky, and an Indian dwarf named Dr. Jojo, Nick tries to both solve the case and his own problems. The mystery itself is a genuine puzzler, and although Michaels addresses some quite serious subjects, he frequently lightens the mood with a joke (or two, or three) when readers most need it. This technique occasionally falters through overuse, though, and readers may be left unsure how the violent homophobia of one chapter fits with the sitcom-style banter between upscale Nick and bargain-basement Norm in another. What isn’t in doubt, however, is both characters’ lovability—or the anxiousness that readers will feel as they hope for things to turn out all right. As Nick and Norm close in on a surprise suspect, the pages practically turn themselves.
Bodies keep piling up and things keep getting worse for Detective Scott, but readers will smile (and shiver) right to the end.Pub Date: July 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5086216-9-0
Page Count: -
Publisher: LaMancha Press
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Hannah, after eight paperbacks, abandons her successful time-travelers for a hardcover life of kitchen-sink romance. Everyone must have got the Olympic Peninsula memo for this spring because, as of this reading, authors Hannah, Nora Roberts, and JoAnn Ross have all placed their newest romances in or near the Quinault rain forest. Here, 40ish Annie Colwater, returns to Washington State after her husband, high-powered Los Angeles lawyer Blake, tells her he’s found another (younger) woman and wants a divorce. Although a Stanford graduate, Annie has known only a life of perfect wifedom: matching Blake’s ties to his suits and cooking meals from Gourmet magazine. What is she to do with her shattered life? Well, she returns to dad’s house in the small town of Mystic, cuts off all her hair (for a different look), and goes to work as a nanny for lawman Nick Delacroix, whose wife has committed suicide, whose young daughter Izzy refuses to speak, and who himself has descended into despair and alcoholism. Annie spruces up Nick’s home on Mystic Lake and sends “Izzy-bear” back into speech mode. And, after Nick begins attending AA meetings, she and he become lovers. Still, when Annie learns that she’s pregnant not with Nick’s but with Blake’s child, she heads back to her empty life in the Malibu Colony. The baby arrives prematurely, and mean-spirited Blake doesn’t even stick around to support his wife. At this point, it’s perfectly clear to Annie—and the reader—that she’s justified in taking her newborn daughter and driving back north. Hannah’s characters indulge in so many stages of the weeps, from glassy eyes to flat-out sobs, that tear ducts are almost bound to stay dry. (First printing of 100,000; first serial to Good Housekeeping; Literary Guild/Doubleday book club selections)
Pub Date: March 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-609-60249-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1999
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally...
Yale’s secret societies hide a supernatural secret in this fantasy/murder mystery/school story.
Most Yale students get admitted through some combination of impressive academics, athletics, extracurriculars, family connections, and donations, or perhaps bribing the right coach. Not Galaxy “Alex” Stern. The protagonist of Bardugo’s (King of Scars, 2019, etc.) first novel for adults, a high school dropout and low-level drug dealer, Alex got in because she can see dead people. A Yale dean who's a member of Lethe, one of the college’s famously mysterious secret societies, offers Alex a free ride if she will use her spook-spotting abilities to help Lethe with its mission: overseeing the other secret societies’ occult rituals. In Bardugo’s universe, the “Ancient Eight” secret societies (Lethe is the eponymous Ninth House) are not just old boys’ breeding grounds for the CIA, CEOs, Supreme Court justices, and so on, as they are in ours; they’re wielders of actual magic. Skull and Bones performs prognostications by borrowing patients from the local hospital, cutting them open, and examining their entrails. St. Elmo’s specializes in weather magic, useful for commodities traders; Aurelian, in unbreakable contracts; Manuscript goes in for glamours, or “illusions and lies,” helpful to politicians and movie stars alike. And all these rituals attract ghosts. It’s Alex’s job to keep the supernatural forces from embarrassing the magical elite by releasing chaos into the community (all while trying desperately to keep her grades up). “Dealing with ghosts was like riding the subway: Do not make eye contact. Do not smile. Do not engage. Otherwise, you never know what might follow you home.” A townie’s murder sets in motion a taut plot full of drug deals, drunken assaults, corruption, and cover-ups. Loyalties stretch and snap. Under it all runs the deep, dark river of ambition and anxiety that at once powers and undermines the Yale experience. Alex may have more reason than most to feel like an imposter, but anyone who’s spent time around the golden children of the Ivy League will likely recognize her self-doubt.
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally dazzling sequels.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-31307-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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