Sam and her boyfriend, former policeman Reece, are now engaged and living in Toronto, but he finds himself at loose ends in...
Private eye Sam McNamara is back for a third adventure in Fraser’s (Skully: Perdition Games, 2015, etc.) new thriller, investigating a crime that hits close to home and forces her to suspect her own friends.
Sam and her boyfriend, former policeman Reece, are now engaged and living in Toronto, but he finds himself at loose ends in the city. He misses the rural life and feels out of place among Sam’s friends, with the exception of one: Abby, a ballet dancer whose girlfriend, Talia, is overseas with the Canadian Armed Forces. But after Abby is found dead after slitting her wrists in a bathtub—and also found to be four months pregnant—some of Sam’s friends suspect Reece is the father, as he was one of the men she knew best. Meanwhile, Sam’s psychiatrist friend, Roger, is embroiled in an affair with former patient Brenda; her husband, Graham, is brutally murdered on the same day that Roger is visiting her. As Sam and Reece investigate Graham’s death, they’re not sure whether to suspect Roger, who seems to be hiding something; one of Brenda and Graham’s teenage children, whose stories don’t add up; or Graham’s ex-wife, who spent several years in prison for murdering her own mother. Sam and Reece must try to untangle the truth from the lies even as Sam’s friends remain hostile toward Reece. Overall, Fraser crafts a strong mystery that sweeps readers along with the two well-developed main characters. Sam’s and Reece’s personal issues and friendships are just as compelling as the question of who committed Graham’s murder. Every twist, turn, and moment of misdirection will keep readers guessing, but these elements never feel overly telegraphed or intentionally misleading. The story also moves along at a brisk pace and ends on a dark yet satisfying note that will leave readers eager to find out what happens next in the series.Pub Date: June 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9947742-3-1
Page Count: 428
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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