Overly intricate character work hobbles a crafty plot.
Fraser’s (Frozen Statues, 2017, etc.) thriller follows a pair of private investigators as their respective workloads converge on a killer.
In Toronto, private investigators Samantha McNamara and Reece Hash are engaged. Sam is pursuing her doctoral degree and hopes to get an internship at the Serenity Clinic under neuropsychiatrist Dr. Emily Armstrong. Reece is a legal articling student assigned to “audit police due diligence” in several “closed sudden-death cases.” Busying their lives further is a new puppy, Pepin, and the siblings Eli and Danny Watson, who form the technologically savvy portion of the investigative team. At the clinic, Sam is offered the internship, but only if she’s willing to help deprogram 17-year-old Fadiya Basha, survivor of the Bueton Sanctuary cult. Fadiya believes that the cult’s deceased leader, Mussani, visits her at night. She’s also eight weeks pregnant, which shouldn’t be possible. Meanwhile, Reece learns that drone sightings connect his cases. As the two PIs proceed, each must decide whether to navigate treacherous moral terrain for the greater good. Fraser’s latest Perdition Games thriller augments plotlines with domestic travails, including the noisy, destructive Pepin and Sam’s Alzheimer’s-stricken mother, Grace, who insists on planning an elaborate wedding for her daughter. While these elements help the main characters grow within the series, they also slow momentum. Chapters follow Sam, Reece, and someone named Blu, whose tragic upbringing in Louisiana borders on the Dickensian. Fraser toys with readers, creating victims who are so repulsive that we practically cheer their demises. A tangle of subplots—featuring the gruff Dr. Mathias Beauregard and the young science prodigy Azar Basha—helps obscure the connecting element between Sam’s and Reece’s cases. Fraser drains some of the menace from her killer by providing an overly elaborate backstory. However, excellent use of Eli, who has Asperger syndrome, bolsters the final third. Readers will be entertained if they can reconcile the driving events in the present with the melodrama of the flashbacks.
Overly intricate character work hobbles a crafty plot.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9947742-6-2
Page Count: 399
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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