Moderately engaging whodunit that becomes whocaresaboutit before the end.
A Chinese police inspector and her American lawyer husband venture up the Yangtze River to investigate murder and corruption.
This is the third in See’s series (Flower Net; The Interior, not reviewed) set in the Middle Kingdom, and it drags a fair amount of baggage forward. Heroine Liu Hulan is a tough cookie who makes things difficult for the criminals she goes after. But she also makes them tricky, to say the least, for her husband David Stark, American lawyer in private practice in Beijing and frequent investigative partner of Hulan’s. At the outset here, Hulan is monitoring a Tiananmen Square demonstration of a Falun Gong–ish cult when one of the demonstrators pulls a knife and tries to kill her daughter in a sign of protest. Hulan shoots and kills the mother—the right thing to do, perhaps, but still not something her bosses are particularly happy about. Soon, Hulan and Stark are heading up the Yangtze, to the construction site of the massive Three Gorges Dam, to look into the death of an American archaeologist. While the two do what they can to ferret out the culprits behind the murder (soon to be murders) they’ve been sent to look into, and the theft of artifacts from nearby digs, the oppressive memory of their shared history (especially the tragic death of their child) keeps tripping up the forward momentum of their stalled relationship—and, unfortunately, of See’s story as well, though for the first third or so, the author makes good suspense out of her nuanced integration of the Chinese and American cultures, and of the massive, Pharaonic (and real-life) Three Gorges Dam.
Moderately engaging whodunit that becomes whocaresaboutit before the end.Pub Date: May 27, 2003
ISBN: 0-679-46320-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Perfect for readers who wish To Kill a Mockingbird had been presented from a slightly older, male point of view.
Eskens’ latest novel is a warmhearted story of a white teenager's awakening to the racial tensions that run through his Missouri town in 1976.
Years before he’ll become a successful attorney (The Shadows We Hide, 2018, etc.), Boady Sanden struggles to navigate all the usual high school ordeals in small-town Jessup, including boring subjects and bullying by the likes of all-state wrestler and prom king Jarvis Halcomb. In Boady’s case, these everyday problems are aggravated by his outsider status as a non-Catholic freshman at St. Ignatius High School, his home life with his widowed, introverted mother, Emma, and, most recently, the arrival of some new neighbors, the Elgins. Charles Elgin is definitely an improvement on indolent Cecil Halcomb, Jarvis' father, whom he replaces as manager of the local manufacturing plant after bookkeeper Lida Poe disappears with more than $100,000 of the plant’s money. Jenna Elgin is excellent company for Emma Sanden, whom she helps draw out of her shell. And after a comically unfortunate first encounter, Boady quickly takes to their son, Thomas, who’s exactly his age. But the Elgins, like Lida Poe, are African American, and the combination of an unsolved embezzlement, good old boy Cecil’s displacement by an outsider, and the town’s incipient racism works slowly but inexorably to put Boady, recruited by the Crusaders of Racial Purity and Strength, under pressure to betray his new friendship. Declining to join the racists but repeatedly running away rather than refusing their demands point blank, Boady must navigate a perilous route to supporting his community and claiming his own adult identity.
Perfect for readers who wish To Kill a Mockingbird had been presented from a slightly older, male point of view.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-50972-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Mulholland Books/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
What starts off as Easter eggs ends up as one big, shapeless omelet in Lucy’s feckless 21st.
A holiday tradition turns lethal in small-town Maine.
The residents of Tinker’s Cove have always dressed their toddlers in their Sunday best for the annual Easter egg hunt at Vivian Van Vorst’s beautiful mansion. But this year, Pine Point is looking a bit seedy. The lawn is unkempt, no one is directing traffic, and VV is nowhere to be seen. Worst of all, her grandson, Van Vorst Duff, dressed in a bunny suit, drops dead at the gates of the estate before he can hide a single egg. Lucy Stone (Chocolate Covered Murder, 2011, etc.), ace reporter for the Tinker’s Cove Pennysaver, takes time off from covering the town council meeting to help her colleague Phyllis’ niece Elfrida cater Van’s funeral—giving her plenty of opportunity to snoop. She discovers that VV is being confined to her room and fed nothing but canned nutritional supplement while her granddaughter Vicky Allen and Vicky’s husband, Henry, aided by unscrupulous lawyer George Weatherby, sell off her priceless art treasures. When the Allens give VV’s faithful butler Willis the sack, they have a fight on their hands. Thanks to local attorney Bob Goodman, the trio is brought to trial on charges of elder abuse. Reporters from all over the country choke the streets of Gilead, the county seat. Famous defense attorney Howard Zuzick, representing the Allens, looks as if he might have some tricks up his sleeve. But surprise! Meier drops that plot and instead packs Lucy off on a mission to hunt down VV’s long-lost daughter for former librarian Miss Julia Tilley.
What starts off as Easter eggs ends up as one big, shapeless omelet in Lucy’s feckless 21st.Pub Date: Jan. 29, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7582-2935-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2013
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