This tale’s well-drawn characters move like clockwork through a series of wild, suspenseful plot twists in a danse macabre...
Left for dead in the Sahara Desert beside two corpses, Matthias Callaghan—with no money, ID, or meds—finagles his way to his doctor in Switzerland and then to London.
In this sixth installment of his series, Ekemar (The Callaghan Tetralogy, 2018, etc.) continues to breathe excitement into his face-changing, vengeance-filled, Jekyll and Hyde premise. As soon as the unflappable Callaghan reaches London, where he is wanted for jumping bail on a murder charge, he starts juggling the pieces of his fragmented life in his classic, inimitable style. His intricate personal history includes mutilation by Russian gangsters and two face transplants. Now the machinations of the FBI, the Russian mob, and a crooked cop add complications, which Callaghan is not yet aware of. He just happens to still have the keys to his old flat, which is currently owned by head Russian mobster Vasily Ivanovich. Callaghan breaks in, finds photographs of his own supposedly dead body in the desert, and snaps pictures of stolen artwork. By turning it all over to the police, he essentially cripples the mob and buys himself a measure of credibility with the authorities, not to mention incurring the psychopathic wrath of Ivanovich, who is now set on revenge at any cost. This is one of the few negatives of Ekemar’s series. Not only do some major plot twists (like the flat and the keys) turn on coincidences, but there are also less important but no less extreme flukes such as the oddly entwined histories of Callaghan’s wife and ex-wife. Such flaws, however, are easily overlooked amid all the solid prose, action, plot turns, and conniving among the fully developed protagonists and antagonists alike. Callaghan haggles for an early hearing in his murder case using a picture of the mysterious Ivanovich as a bargaining chip. As in previous installments, the author nicely sets up his readers for the next episode with a grand finale, leaving various threads hanging.
This tale’s well-drawn characters move like clockwork through a series of wild, suspenseful plot twists in a danse macabre of greed, murder, and revenge.Pub Date: May 5, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-71739-728-7
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Bradley & Brougham Publshing House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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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