by Ketsia Lessard ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 21, 2019
A law enforcement novel with engaging characters but uneven storytelling.
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In Lessard’s debut novel, two siblings fight crime and desperation in rural Canada.
As the story opens, Vancouver-based Constable Jasper Nelson meets Heidi Finlay, a fellow member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the half sister that he only learned about just before his father’s recent death. The two quickly bond, and Jasper transfers to join Heidi in Inuvik, the rural Northwest Territories town where she grew up and still works. He quickly finds his footing in the north, and the siblings deal with crimes involving drugs, theft, abduction, suicide, and assault. After a brief transfer to an even more remote posting in Repulse Bay, they return to Inuvik only to run into trouble with corrupt local officials. The story alternates between both siblings’ first-person perspectives, and Heidi and Jasper have entirely distinct narrative voices. The more urbane and educated Jasper has a tendency to make grandiose pronouncements while Heidi tends to be more pragmatic (“I think it is relevant to expand on this family business, and I will tell it like it is”). The narrative becomes more episodic as the book progresses, presenting the cops’ adventures without making clear connections between them, and the sudden pivot to a conspiracy in the final chapter (which involves Freemasons) is unexpected. There are several well-developed Indigenous characters, but other depictions verge on stereotype, such as that of the first person Jasper sees in Inuvik: “A drunken Inuvialuk was lying on the church steps, an empty mickey in his hand.” Lessard is clearly knowledgeable about the cultures that she presents, however, and her book does a good job of showing the complicated and problematic relationship between Indigenous communities and the officials who often victimize them. A rich cast of secondary characters, including Bible-quoting Sgt. Nathaniel Matthews and Heidi’s friend Sarah Kudlak, is one of the novel’s strengths.
A law enforcement novel with engaging characters but uneven storytelling.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5255-4036-3
Page Count: 174
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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BOOK REVIEW
by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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