by Kildare ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A
An easy, fast-paced tale of criminal intrigue that’s part Wild West, part Fargo.
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Kildare, the author of The Tragedy of Beauty (2018), offers a neo-Western set on the prairies of North Dakota during a 21st-century oil boom.
In the early 2000s, precise directional drilling became a viable technology for recovering oil, so regions located over the Bakken Formation (a massive rock under the ground in Montana, North Dakota, and parts of Canada) saw rapid upticks in industry, revenue, and population. The Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, nestled in the northeastern corner of North Dakota, was no exception. But with the rapid boom came social consequences, and Gena Blood Crow, a young tribal cop, is determined to guard her community from the encroaching presence of drugs, crime, and corruption. Although her mission is personal—her own brother was murdered by members of a drug cartel—she’s often frustrated by her perpetually understaffed department and a seemingly inescapable maze of competing jurisdictions. Her uncle, the stubborn Boots Charging Thunder, decides to take revenge into his own hands and organize a local militia to eliminate the cartel by whatever means necessary. Law enforcement, the militia, and the cartel are soon heading toward one another on an inevitable crash course. What could have been a simplistic tale of good guys versus bad is complicated by the machinations of local bureaucracy and politics—and by villains who fall in love with heroes’ innocent relatives, which is true to the nature of life in a small town. One cartel leader stands out as a memorably complex figure: Rafael Vega is a seasoned drug runner and a coldblooded killer, but he also senses others’ sadness and feels guilty about the blood on his hands; he’s even conversant in chaos theory. An unexpected love affair also gives him a profound desire to change his life. Kildare’s tightly controlled sentences and smooth dialogue are engaging and chock-full of splendid detail aside from the occasional cliché (“The puppet had become the puppet master”).
An easy, fast-paced tale of criminal intrigue that’s part Wild West, part Fargo.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-9963057-4-7
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Kildare Press LLC
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Kildare
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2008
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of...
Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.
Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
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BOOK TO SCREEN
by Stephen King ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 28, 1976
A presold prefab blockbuster, what with King's Carrie hitting the moviehouses, Salem's Lot being lensed, The Shining itself sold to Warner Bros. and tapped as a Literary Guild full selection, NAL paperback, etc. (enough activity to demand an afterlife to consummate it all).
The setting is The Overlook, a palatial resort on a Colorado mountain top, snowbound and closed down for the long, long winter. Jack Torrance, a booze-fighting English teacher with a history of violence, is hired as caretaker and, hoping to finish a five-act tragedy he's writing, brings his wife Wendy and small son Danny to the howling loneliness of the half-alive and mad palazzo. The Overlook has a gruesome past, scenes from which start popping into the present in various suites and the ballroom. At first only Danny, gifted with second sight (he's a "shiner"), can see them; then the whole family is being zapped by satanic forces. The reader needs no supersight to glimpse where the story's going as King's formula builds to a hotel reeling with horrors during Poesque New Year's Eve revelry and confetti outta nowhere....
Back-prickling indeed despite the reader's unwillingness at being mercilessly manipulated.
Pub Date: Jan. 28, 1976
ISBN: 0385121679
Page Count: 453
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1976
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by Stephen King
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by Stephen King
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by Stephen King
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