A fitfully effective but readable start to a mystery series.
A serial killer targets girls as a woman searches relentlessly for her long-lost daughter in this novel.
Miranda Steele is as tough as her name. She can hold her own in a hot pepper–eating contest, swear like a stevedore, and dispatch bar creeps with some well-placed, high-heeled stomps and kicks. In short, as someone observes, “Girl’s a real scrapper.” But it was not always thus. Thirteen years earlier, she was the verbally and physically abused wife of a policeman who one night literally threw her out into the snow, but not before giving up their infant daughter for adoption. #MeToo? She’s more like #NoMore. Since then, she has toughened up, moved from city to city searching for her daughter, and supported herself by welding girders on a New York skyscraper, harvesting crab on a Maine fishing boat, and performing various jobs on a Texas oil rig. Now working construction in Pittsburgh, she is contacted by a volunteer with an adoption reunion agency who has a solid lead on her daughter’s whereabouts. She heads to Atlanta’s tony Buckhead community, where she meets wealthy and handsome Wade Parker, “Atlanta’s ace detective” and “the town’s most eligible 44-year-old bachelor.” Initial distrust transforms into a partnership as they investigate the murder of a local 13-year-old girl with whom Parker has a family connection. Miranda worries that the victim could be her daughter. This series launch is an appealing mashup of gritty serial killer thriller and romance novel (“ ‘Don’t tempt me, Miranda.’ She gazed into those knowing, deep gray eyes. ‘Why not?’ she murmured. ‘You’ve been tempting me since the first night I saw you’ ”). Lanier (Mind Bender, 2017, etc.) has created an empowered and formidable heroine. But her writing is as subtle as one of those hot peppers Miranda crunches. “I made myself strong,” Miranda defiantly tells Parker at one point. “I vowed to myself that no one would ever hurt me like that again. Never….Do you hear me? Never.” In comedy, there is a rule of three. There should be a rule of two for crime fiction. “A woman can never make herself too tough or too strong” gets the job done. Adding “or too street smart” is overkill.
A fitfully effective but readable start to a mystery series.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-941191-12-5
Page Count: 271
Publisher: Felicity Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This novel began as a reworking of W.W. Jacobs' horror classic "The Monkey's Paw"—a short story about the dreadful outcome when a father wishes for his dead son's resurrection. And King's 400-page version reads, in fact, like a monstrously padded short story, moving so slowly that every plot-turn becomes lumberingly predictable. Still, readers with a taste for the morbid and ghoulish will find unlimited dark, mortality-obsessed atmosphere here—as Dr. Louis Creed arrives in Maine with wife Rachel and their two little kids Ellie and Gage, moving into a semi-rural house not far from the "Pet Sematary": a spot in the woods where local kids have been burying their pets for decades. Louis, 35, finds a great new friend/father-figure in elderly neighbor Jud Crandall; he begins work as director of the local university health-services. But Louis is oppressed by thoughts of death—especially after a dying student whispers something about the pet cemetery, then reappears in a dream (but is it a dream) to lead Louis into those woods during the middle of the night. What is the secret of the Pet Sematary? Well, eventually old Jud gives Louis a lecture/tour of the Pet Sematary's "annex"—an old Micmac burying ground where pets have been buried. . .and then reappeared alive! So, when little Ellie's beloved cat Church is run over (while Ellie's visiting grandfolks), Louis and Jud bury it in the annex—resulting in a faintly nasty resurrection: Church reappears, now with a foul smell and a creepy demeanor. But: what would happen if a human corpse were buried there? That's the question when Louis' little son Gage is promptly killed in an accident. Will grieving father Louis dig up his son's body from the normal graveyard and replant it in the Pet Sematary? What about the stories of a previous similar attempt—when dead Timmy Baterman was "transformed into some sort of all-knowing daemon?" Will Gage return to the living—but as "a thing of evil?" He will indeed, spouting obscenities and committing murder. . .before Louis must eliminate this child-demon he has unleashed. Filled out with overdone family melodrama (the feud between Louis and his father-in-law) and repetitious inner monologues: a broody horror tale that's strong on dark, depressing chills, weak on suspense or surprise—and not likely to please the fans of King's zestier, livelier terror-thons.
Pub Date: Nov. 4, 1983
ISBN: 0743412281
Page Count: 420
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1983
BOOK TO SCREEN
As she seeks to repair bridges, Cat awakens anger and treachery in the hearts of those she once betrayed. Making amends,...
Before sobriety, Catherine "Cat" Coombs had it all: fun friends, an exciting job, and a love affair with alcohol. Until she blacked out one more time and woke up in a stranger’s bed.
By that time, “having it all” had already devolved into hiding the extent of her drinking from everyone she cared about, including herself. Luckily for Cat, the stranger turned out to be Jason Halliwell, a rather delicious television director marking three years, eight months, and 69 days of sobriety. Inspired by Jason—or rather, inspired by the prospect of a romantic relationship with this handsome hunk—Cat joins him at AA meetings and embarks on her own journey toward clarity. But sobriety won’t work until Cat commits to it for herself. Their relationship is tumultuous, as Cat falls off the wagon time and again. Along the way, Cat discovers that the cold man she grew up endlessly failing to please was not her real father, and with his death, her mother’s secret escapes. So she heads for Nantucket, where she meets her drunken dad and two half sisters—one boisterously welcoming and the other sulkily suspicious—and where she commits an unforgivable blunder. Years later, despairing of her persistent relapses, Jason has left Cat, taking their daughter with him. Finally, painfully, Cat gets clean. Green (Saving Grace, 2014, etc.) handles grim issues with a sure hand, balancing light romance with tense family drama. She unflinchingly documents Cat’s humiliations under the influence and then traces her commitment to sobriety. Simultaneously masking the motivations of those surrounding our heroine, Green sets up a surprising karmic lesson.
As she seeks to repair bridges, Cat awakens anger and treachery in the hearts of those she once betrayed. Making amends, like addiction, may endanger her future.Pub Date: June 23, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-04734-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 1, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
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