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DEATH SPOKE

A cinematically immersive murder mystery deftly combined with an intellectual drama.

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A cerebral detective investigates the killing of a renowned archaeologist who may have stumbled on a major case of academic fraud in this sequel. 

Joyce Fulbright is a dean at the University of Kansas and an academic superstar, famous for her research on prehistoric art left scrawled in the caves of France. When she’s murdered, all eyes immediately turn to her colleague and furtive lover, Dr. James Porter, who quickly admits to their affair but vehemently denies killing her. Still, the evidence so strongly implicates him—his hair and semen were found on the scene, and his skin under Fulbright’s fingernails—that even Porter’s own lawyer takes his guilt for granted. Porter hires private eye Harry Przewalski to investigate, a hard-boiled veteran who was once deployed to Iraq, and so uncommonly erudite he impresses even the scholars he meets. Harry quickly determines that the list of those with a motive to kill Fulbright is long—she treated her associates with despotic disdain and even blackmailed some for sexual favors. As one colleague of Fulbright’s puts it, referring to an academic excursion that she attended: “Christ, half the faculty on that bus would have loved to suffocate the bitch.” Krishtalka (The Bone Field, 2018, etc.), continuing a series that chronicles Harry’s exploits, skillfully mixes a murder mystery with an intricate tale of academic intrigue and historical drama. Harry discovers that Fulbright had scholarly reasons to suspect that the art in one particular cave in France in a village named Rouffignac is fraudulent and at the site of an unspeakable atrocity during World War II.  At the heart of the author’s astonishingly clever tale—both intelligently conceived and executed—is the protagonist. Harry is slyly intellectual, lacks pretension, and harbors a profound storehouse of pain belied by his emotional reticence. Some of the author’s best writing in the book—his prose is consistently sharp and illustrative—describes Harry’s quiet torment. Consider this passage that eloquently captures the traumatic fallout of his mother’s debilitating illness: “Harry had felt his father shrink from the stealth of Emilia’s decay, from her no longer knowing who is me and who is them and who is us. They would come upon Emilia rehearsing her life from a list she’d written on a piece of paper.” And while the plot flirts with implausibility, given the introduction of an unlikely coincidence that weaves Emilia into Harry’s investigation of the crime, it remains grippingly suspenseful. In addition, Krishtalka provides a scathing peek into the venal corridors of academic life and its petty power struggles over professional status. Fulbright emerges as a tantalizingly complex figure, capable of grotesque displays of immorality, but still moved by a principled attachment to the truth, a commitment sometimes interred under the small-minded squabbles of scholarly life. The author provides the best this genre has to offer: a riveting exploration of a crime blended with a deeply stirring examination of human nature. 

A cinematically immersive murder mystery deftly combined with an intellectual drama. 

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: 978-1-941237-28-1

Page Count: 277

Publisher: Anamcara Press LLC

Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2019

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A LITTLE LIFE

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

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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

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

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

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