A smart caper with a heroine to match.
When her new job at a movie studio turns deadly, the daughter of a renowned private investigator is her company’s only hope—and the highlight of this debut mystery.
Years ago, Corrie Locke and her father cracked a murder case that could have put an NBA superstar in prison. Now she’s relieved to take on a comparatively tame position as an entertainment lawyer in sunny Newport Beach, California, where she’ll be far away from danger—or so she thinks. When Druby Valdez, the company’s former head of security, is found dead at the bottom of a lake, his co-workers suspect foul play. But Corrie is reluctant to tackle the case on her own. Her “gene for caution is a recessive one, but it’s still there,” and conducting a murder investigation is not an easy thing to do while navigating office politics. Corrie’s misadventures with her co-workers are as fun to read about as her amateur sleuthing. Inside the Complex—“a place filled with intrigue, deception, secrets, and beautiful people”—Corrie has more egos to manage than contracts to write. She deftly turns her business meetings into excuses to dig for clues, risking certain termination (as well as unwanted attention from lecherous executives) if she focuses on the wrong person. Meanwhile, Sideris also reveals, through Corrie’s other cases (a missing cat and a possible alien abduction), how Corrie’s past may have led her to her present. The author paints Corrie’s co-workers as being as devious as cartoon villains, so the list of suspects quickly becomes unwieldy. However, she also adds gentle humor and a touch of romance. Outside of work, for example, Corrie’s childhood friend Michael is sincere when others are superficial. He becomes her likable partner in fighting crime—and possibly more. Another memorable ally is Veera, a security guard and a first-year law student, who comes to work as her assistant, fending off Corrie’s enemies with creative threats like, “I’m going to dislocate all of your limbs. Then I’m gonna pour Kool-Aid all over your sorry ass and plant it in an ant’s nest.”
A smart caper with a heroine to match.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5092-0240-9
Page Count: 408
Publisher: The Wild Rose Press, Inc.
Review Posted Online: Sept. 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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