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
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
