by Lawrence Osborne ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 18, 2020
A seductive, darkly atmospheric thriller with a spine-tingling climax.
After fleecing a famous New York novelist while working as her personal assistant, Sarah Mullins is targeted by schemers on the other side of the world.
Responding to overtures from a dealer in Hong Kong, Sarah flew there to sell a cache of her employer's letters, with the fading 85-year-old writer's approval. Having peeled off $200,000 in cash from the sale, Sarah is now hiding out in Bangkok in a decaying, once-glamorous apartment complex called the Kingdom. Power outages, seasonal flooding, and rumors of a military crackdown are causing occupants to leave. Though regarded as an oddity, the somber, withdrawn Sarah finds companionship in the extroverted but secretive Mali, a British-educated financial assistant; Ximena, a Chilean chef at a French restaurant; and Natalie, a hotel manager whose “eyes contained a strange hint of vendetta." It isn't long before word of the stash of money in Sarah's closet gets out. The maid, an opportunist like everyone else in this morally compromised world, has a passkey for all of the units and isn't shy about using it. Blackmailed, then implicated in an apparent murder, and finally deserted, Sarah loses all sense of identity. Can she be saved? Coming off his acclaimed Philip Marlowe novel, Only To Sleep (2018), the Bangkok-based Osborne here tilts toward Robert Stone and Graham Greene with his languorous portrayal of an ugly American—a farang, as the locals call White people—getting schooled in a foreign culture. It's a masterfully drawn, mesmerizing novel in which the ghosts of the past—like the bats, lizards, and geckos who gain free access to the Kingdom—refuse to vacate the premises.
A seductive, darkly atmospheric thriller with a spine-tingling climax.Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-984824-30-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
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by Barbara Kingsolver ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 18, 2022
An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.
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Pulitzer Prize Winner
Inspired by David Copperfield, Kingsolver crafts a 21st-century coming-of-age story set in America’s hard-pressed rural South.
It’s not necessary to have read Dickens’ famous novel to appreciate Kingsolver’s absorbing tale, but those who have will savor the tough-minded changes she rings on his Victorian sentimentality while affirming his stinging critique of a heartless society. Our soon-to-be orphaned narrator’s mother is a substance-abusing teenage single mom who checks out via OD on his 11th birthday, and Demon’s cynical, wised-up voice is light-years removed from David Copperfield’s earnest tone. Yet readers also see the yearning for love and wells of compassion hidden beneath his self-protective exterior. Like pretty much everyone else in Lee County, Virginia, hollowed out economically by the coal and tobacco industries, he sees himself as someone with no prospects and little worth. One of Kingsolver’s major themes, hit a little too insistently, is the contempt felt by participants in the modern capitalist economy for those rooted in older ways of life. More nuanced and emotionally engaging is Demon’s fierce attachment to his home ground, a place where he is known and supported, tested to the breaking point as the opiate epidemic engulfs it. Kingsolver’s ferocious indictment of the pharmaceutical industry, angrily stated by a local girl who has become a nurse, is in the best Dickensian tradition, and Demon gives a harrowing account of his descent into addiction with his beloved Dori (as naïve as Dickens’ Dora in her own screwed-up way). Does knowledge offer a way out of this sinkhole? A committed teacher tries to enlighten Demon’s seventh grade class about how the resource-rich countryside was pillaged and abandoned, but Kingsolver doesn’t air-brush his students’ dismissal of this history or the prejudice encountered by this African American outsider and his White wife. She is an art teacher who guides Demon toward self-expression, just as his friend Tommy provokes his dawning understanding of how their world has been shaped by outside forces and what he might be able to do about it.
An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-325-1922
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
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by Tana French ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 5, 2024
An absorbing crime yarn.
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A divorced American detective tries to blend into rural Ireland in this sequel to The Searcher (2020).
In fictional Ardnakelty, on Ireland’s west coast, lives retired American cop Cal Hooper, who busies himself repairing furniture with 15-year-old Theresa “Trey” Reddy and fervently wishes to be boring. Then into town pops Trey’s long-gone, good-for-nothing dad, Johnny, all smiles and charm. Much to her distaste, he says he wants to reclaim his fatherly role. In fact, he’s on the run from a criminal for a debt he can’t repay, and he has a cockamamie scheme to persuade local townsfolk that there might be gold in the nearby mountain with a vein that might run through some of their properties. (What, no leprechauns?) “It’s not sheep shite you’ll be smelling in a few months’ time, man,” he tells a farmer. “It’s champagne and caviar.” Some people have fun fantasizing about sudden riches, but they know better. Johnny’s pursuer, Cillian Rushborough, comes to town, and Johnny tries to convince him he could get rich by purchasing people’s land. Alas, someone bashes Rushborough’s brains in, and now there’s a murder mystery. The plot is a bit of a stretch, but the characters and their relationships work well. Trey detests Johnny for not being in her life, and now that he’s back, she neither wants nor needs him. She gets on much better with Cal. Still, she’s a testy teenager when she thinks someone is not treating her like an adult. Cal is aware of this, and he’s careful how he talks to her. Johnny, not so much: “I swear to fuck, women are only put on this earth to wreck our fuckin’ heads,” he whines about Trey’s mother, briefly forgetting he’s talking to Trey. The book abounds in local color and lively dialogue.
An absorbing crime yarn.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9780593493434
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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