A violent, thrilling mystery hampered at times by overly gruesome exposition.
A debut novel following a former hit man who tries to eliminate old enemies before the past catches up with him.
Tristan Stonehorse just got out of prison; someone is already trying to kill him. While repaying a debt he owed a prison gang leader, Tristan finds himself in the middle of an ambush, realizing that someone from the past, someone dangerous and with deep connections, wants him gone for good. Unfortunately for Tristan, the list of suspects is long. After his time as one of the First Nation Syndicate’s top hit men in Canada, there are crooked Mounties, vengeful Hells Angels, and plenty of other shadowy underworld figures who wouldn’t mind him dead. His only clue comes from the execution of a former associate, whose last words point Tristan to a particular job he’d like to forget. As he moves across Canada to stay one step ahead of his pursuers, he revisits his time serving the British forces in Operation Desert Storm as well as the painful memories of his childhood abuse at the hands of twisted priests—a last vendetta he wants to repay and a source of surprising emotional vulnerability. As all these past sins start coming together and closing down on the resourceful Tristan, his daughter, who had finally moved out of the shadows of her father’s crimes, becomes both his biggest weakness and a potential path to real justice. Fleishman mainly writes in the present tense, creating a frantic and absorbing pace that builds intriguing distance from this dangerous main character as he reacts with brutal, calculated force. Tristan has all the makings of a tremendous and complex antihero, reminiscent of those found in Cormac McCarthy or James Ellroy novels. However, the past-tense chapters feel sluggish in comparison. These sections, which detail his past crimes, seem to limp from one grisly act of violence to the next. They provide answers about Tristan, but instead of adding depth, they make him less sympathetic and less interesting.
A violent, thrilling mystery hampered at times by overly gruesome exposition.Pub Date: June 30, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9876927-1-9
Page Count: 254
Publisher: Wheat Kings Endeavor
Review Posted Online: July 24, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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