Crane’s (Baghdad on the Wabash, 2013, etc.) novel uses true-crime fact to fuel tense, emotional fiction.
Marcella Armand and her husband, Gavin, are living a solid, healthy life in suburban Illinois when their youngest child, Hannah, goes missing on her way to school one day. The family, neighborhood, and law enforcement spring into action and seem to leave no stone unturned, but as days turn to weeks and then months, there’s no sign of the child. Refusing to give up hope, Marcella and Gavin hire a private investigator to look into the case, but his few leads are thin and dwindling fast. Some readers may have trouble connecting with the characters in these early sections, dominated as they are by exposition and action, but those who press on will be richly rewarded with portraits of complex, human figures as the novel develops. The world continues spinning, and the couple has to figure out how to live in it, eventually moving from Illinois to New Jersey in search of a new start, against Marcella’s instincts. The couple’s bond feels genuine, and the novel paints an impressive picture of how their struggle with Hannah’s disappearance alternately rekindles their romance and drives a wedge between them. Tensions rise and fall, and infidelity hangs over them like a pall—Marcella had an affair before Hannah’s birth, and she now has suspicions involving Gavin and his secretary. What’s more, Marcella becomes obsessed with a murder that took place in their new neighborhood in 1957: the real-life case of Edgar Smith, who was convicted of killing a 15-year-old. She delves deeper and deeper into the Smith case and into the story of the man himself, looking for the truth and justice that she fears she’ll never get for herself. As her investigation of Smith intensifies and new leads take shape in Hannah’s case, the story takes on a whole new level of intensity, raising questions of whether Hannah will be found, what sort of justice can be had, and what can possibly be left for this family at the end of it all. A dynamic novel about justice, betrayal, and the attachment that we feel to our darkest stories.
Pub Date: Dec. 23, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9969704-1-9
Page Count: 330
Publisher: Breadalbane Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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