A leisurely but lighthearted caper with delightfully zany characters.
An Indiana artist looks into a teen’s suspicious death in Kaiser’s (Joseph’s Easel, 2016, etc.) mystery/comedy.
In 2004, world-famous artist Javi Attila Gran-Cognac lives and works in a junkyard in Ak-wy-yeth, Indiana, churning out paintings with political themes. When county police deputy David Cooper guns down high school senior Billy Redcrow, Javi’s friend and landlord, Andra Duboreaux, wants Javi to look into it. Billy was friends with Andra’s 15-year-old adopted daughter, Culture, for whom Javi acts as a father figure. It turns out that Cooper had been using a nanny cam as a makeshift body camera during the shooting. The sheriff confiscated the footage, however, and Culture believes that the cops plan on digitally altering it to show a gun in Billy’s hand. She and Javi set about proving that such a deception is possible. Meanwhile, Javi’s ex-lover Mary Jean Kruegerrand is the new head of the shady cartel that runs the town; she needs Javi’s help, as well, as she’s trying to make the Kruegerrand empire legitimate, and she’s facing some serious push back. There’s little mystery in this crime tale; readers find out early on, for example, that Billy wasn’t armed. However, Kaiser does offer plenty of humor, including several quirky character names and relationships; for instance, the story later introduces Biloxi Ikenickle, Javi’s old grade school principal who’s now a private eye. The author treats the shooting itself with appropriate respect, but many other events are occasions for comedy, as when the sheriff makes a public statement about withholding the video footage: “The sheriff was short, and his head barely protruded above the podium. He nervously bent the mike down another inch.” Despite references to real-life 2004 events, including the Summer Olympics and the presidential election, much of the technology mentioned is anachronistic; for example, the software Adobe Creative Cloud wasn’t commercially available until 2011.
A leisurely but lighthearted caper with delightfully zany characters.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-72568-931-2
Page Count: 316
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2018
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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