A tenacious, well-constructed mystery/thriller.
A suspicious suicide has people in a small town accusing a doctor of murder in Mulkerin’s (The Ayatollah’s Suitcase, 2013) medical thriller.
When Maggie Lin is found dead from a gunshot to the head, Zoe Hedges tries to convince her pathologist husband, Mick, that her friend was killed by Dr. Vincent Brasco. The doctor, who runs the cancer center at Saint Anselm Hospital, had been seeing Maggie romantically. He’s also notorious for using excessive radiation treatments to generate more revenue, literally burning some of his patients. A witness puts Brasco’s car at the scene of the crime, but the hospital’s CEO seems intent on stopping Mick from performing an autopsy. Brasco then accosts the witness, which results in him being jailed and ultimately charged with murder. But his defense attorney blames someone else: Zoe, a hospice team leader who may have carried out a mercy killing. Mulkerin’s novel quickly establishes itself as a murder mystery, but the story isn’t concerned with gathering clues or accumulating suspects. Rather, it’s a story about appearances: The manner in which one presents evidence to others, it seems to say, is far more important than the evidence itself. In one of the novel’s best lines, for example, Mick explains the danger of the coroner’s announcing the death as a suicide: “The public pins its opinion on the first theory it hears.” This narrative approach gives the plot an intense edge; throughout most of the book, Mick can’t be sure whether his wife is guilty or not, and despite Brasco’s undeniably shady persona, his culpability is largely conjecture. The author focuses on curious, enigmatic elements at times, such as a strange tattoo on Maggie’s backside, but he amps up the suspense when Mick and Zoe receive threatening letters. He also offers engrossing secondary characters, such as Sergei, a radiologist with Asperger’s syndrome.
A tenacious, well-constructed mystery/thriller.Pub Date: May 24, 2014
ISBN: 978-1497332393
Page Count: 444
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
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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