Possesses the prerequisites for a solid mystery, but the protagonists are the true gems.
A psychiatrist and an attorney help a schizophrenic woman institutionalized for murder whose family seems suspiciously indifferent to her potential release in Hayes’ debut thriller.
All the evidence in the fatal stabbing of Angel Ramirez points to Katherine Van Hoerne, daughter to Texas oil magnate Josiah Mantooth and wife of Sen. Clay Van Hoerne. Her father succeeds in getting a judge to declare Katherine mentally incompetent, thereby avoiding a trial by having her committed. Five years later, Katherine’s increasingly erratic behavior entails self-mutilation, and Dr. Ellie Dodds believes her only hope is Thymetrazine. Her family, however, won’t OK an experimental drug treatment, so Ellie hounds Katherine’s lawyer, Jackson Polke, who eventually agrees. Mantooth retaliates with a motion to remove Jackson as Katherine’s lawyer and a threat of a civil suit and disbarment. Jackson loses his job, giving him and Ellie time to look into the Mantooth/Van Hoerne clan, which seems to want Katherine to stay mum in the institution. Delving into the families, however, exposes much more than Jackson and Ellie could have guessed, including a history of mental illness, political corruption, blackmail, and possible murder. Ellie, meanwhile, learns that Katherine has dissociative identity disorder as well as schizophrenia, and the doctor’s encounter with two menacing men could mean that she and Jackson are close to the truth. The credible amateur investigators bolster this novel. The duo wisely convinces Cmdr. Ramon Hinojosa, who’d worked the Ramirez murder, to officially reopen the case. Ramon’s cop status gives him clout, for example, to exhume a body, while his involvement deepens the mystery for readers, particularly once he realizes case files are missing. Hayes’ story is often somber, not surprising since Katherine’s history involves a mother who apparently killed herself and a half sister just as sick as Katherine. But there are moments of brightness, most notably Ellie’s rhinoceros-sized and protective malamute, Lola. Big reveals abound in the final act: numerous family secrets and a shocking murder in the midst of the investigation. Hayes injects plenty of plot twists into the mix, and while a few are predictable, others are positively bombshell-worthy.
Possesses the prerequisites for a solid mystery, but the protagonists are the true gems.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5121-5625-6
Page Count: 326
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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