A quirky, original mystery.
Miller (A Death in Our Family, 2012, etc.) tells the story of a man helping a woman find her mysterious missing husband.
Doc is a man with a checkered past. Down on his luck and despite his middle age, he takes a backbreaking job with a construction crew in Houston. After a brief, bloody conflict with one of his young co-workers, Doc strikes up an unlikely friendship with his boss, the boy’s uncle. He is invited to spend a weekend in the Texas Hill Country on the property of his boss’ sister and the boy’s mother, Maggie Marone. At this point, things begin to get a bit fantastic. Maggie lives in a magnificent compound rising right out of the landscape: “a structure, that was clear, but it appeared to be made of living flora growing in an abundant profusion out of natural rock.” Doc immediately falls for Maggie, a woman who appears to be a manifestation of this strange place: “the feeling of enchantment very real as she placed him on a granite settee under an expanse of overhanging live oak, limbs draped with Spanish moss, the air scented with a barrage of fragrance and humming with the flight song of a thousand honey bees.” Doc soon learns he has been brought to Maggie in hopes that he will help her discover the fate of her vanished husband, Arturo, a dreamer and visionary who disappeared years before. Doc agrees and begins following the clues and rumors that Arturo has left in his wake. The most tantalizing of all is the secret recipe of “The Elixir,” an otherworldly pear brandy, which seems to possess incredible properties. Though the book requires the reader to seriously suspend disbelief, Miller is an apt writer of both the realistic and the fantastic. His prose moves easily from the gruff vernacular of Texas construction workers to lyric descriptions of wondrous events and miraculous happenings. Always moving toward the unexpected, Miller lures readers with further mysteries to keep them flipping pages. The ending isn’t exactly a revelation, but the ride is certainly enjoyable.
A quirky, original mystery.Pub Date: March 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-692-23052-7
Page Count: 300
Publisher: lloyd s. miller
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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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