by Kevin Roberts ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2016
Crisp prose and a savvy protagonist accentuate a smart and unpretentious genre tale.
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In this debut crime novel, a Korean War veteran moonlighting as a bank robber in 1950s New York mingles with vicious hoodlums, the consequence of romancing a mob boss’ ex-wife.
Former Marine Tom Decker doesn’t care for wealthy types. More specifically, the Smiths, who years ago swindled his father, crushed by the Depression, out of Decker’s Hardware. Back from the war, Decker now works for Frank Smith in the store’s paint department. He plans on buying back the family business, having accumulated a pile of cash from stickups he’s been pulling off with partner-in-crime Mitch O’Neill. Things take an unwelcome turn, however, when Irene McKenna walks into Decker’s department. They’ve already hit it off when he learns that Irene is the ex-wife of Enzo Fiori, don of a local mob family. Decker figures the easiest route is to plead his case for dating Irene to currently incarcerated Fiori. But the gangster has details of one of Decker’s recent heists and, in exchange for keeping the particulars of the thief’s criminal activities from Irene, wants part of the loot. Moreover, Fiori enlists Decker’s and O’Neill’s help for another robbery and an even bigger score. Trusting Fiori’s goons doesn’t seem feasible, and getting away intact will require a good deal of luck. Roberts’ pleasantly old-fashioned caper boasts tough-guy vernacular in dialogue and first-person narration. Decker, for example, after taking down a thug menacingly poking his chest with cigar-holding fingers, says: “You ought to be careful where you point that stogie, pal.” He’s nevertheless appealing; his reason for stealing is, at the very least, selfless (reclaim his father’s store), and he’s sweet on winsome co-worker Dottie Gibbs. Roberts further contrasts Decker with his mentor, O’Neill, a true hardened criminal; during one heist, O’Neill dons a Wolf Man mask while Decker portrays Howdy Doody. Perhaps not surprisingly, Fiori’s theft doesn’t go as planned, and Decker’s ensuing scramble is nothing short of exhilarating, including deaths and a double cross or two.
Crisp prose and a savvy protagonist accentuate a smart and unpretentious genre tale.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-945181-01-6
Page Count: 238
Publisher: Moonshine Cove Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Caitlin Mullen ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 3, 2020
A lyrical, incisive, and haunting debut.
In Atlantic City, the bodies of several women wait to be discovered and a young psychic begins having visions of terrible violence.
They are known only as Janes 1 through 6, the women who have been strangled and left in the marsh behind the seedy Sunset Motel. They wait for someone to miss them, to find them. That someone might be Clara, a teenage dropout who works the Atlantic City strip as a psychic and occasionally has visions. She can tell there's something dangerous at work, but she has other problems. To pay the rent, she begins selling her company, and then her body, to older men. One day she meets Lily, another young woman who'd escaped the depressing decay of Atlantic City for New York only to be betrayed by a man. She’s come back to AC because there’s nowhere else to go, and she spends her time working a dead-end job and drinking herself into oblivion. Together, Clara and Lily may be able to figure out the truth—but they will each lose something along the way. Mullen’s style is subtle, flowing; she switches the narrative voice with each chapter, giving us Clara and Lily but also each of the victims. At the heart of the novel lies the bitter observation that “Women get humiliated every day, in small stupid ways and in huge, disastrous ones.” Mullen writes about all the moments that women compromise themselves in the face of male desire and male power and how they learn to use sex as commerce because “men are always promised this, no matter who they are.” The other major character in the novel is Atlantic City itself: fading; falling to ruin; promising an old sort of glamour that no longer exists; swindling sad, lonely people out of their money. This backdrop is unexpected and well rendered.
A lyrical, incisive, and haunting debut.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-2748-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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by Lisa Jewell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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