The dynamic protagonist leads a smart and indelible whodunit.
In Clifton’s (Seeking Cassandra, 2016, etc.) latest thriller, a detective steps outside his jurisdiction to help a mother prove an unidentified skull belongs to her decadeslong missing son.
Peony Folsom specifically requests Sam Chitto of the Choctaw Tribal Police in Oklahoma, since old mystic Sonny Boy Munro assured her that the detective can help. Sonny Boy calls him the Nameless One, a legendary hunter according to Choctaw teachings, and Peony wants Chitto to find her son, Walter, who’s been missing for over 35 years. Based on an artist’s rendering, Peony believes authorities found Walter’s skull in Leona Mann’s recently exhumed coffin, sans Leona’s head and the skull’s body. Retrieving Walter’s remains for a proper ceremony entails Chitto looking into a double homicide from the same night Walter vanished: Leona and her boyfriend, Billy Rob Niles. The detective’s perturbed by the sketchy investigation of the murders; there was no medical examiner involved, and a witness’s name was strangely omitted. But Chitto fears whoever murdered the couple—and maybe Walter as well—is still alive, and the hit-and-run that nearly killed Peony not long ago was a calculated response to the woman asking too many questions about the skull. Having well-established the protagonist’s Native American culture and back story (including his late wife, Mary) in the first Chitto novel, Clifton concentrates the series’ second tale on the mystery. There’s plenty to savor, from an unknown trainman who watched the cops move the couple’s bodies to Walter’s daughter, Crystal, aiding Chitto’s investigation and feeling sure that both her parents abandoned her. While readers may pinpoint the killer(s) before Chitto, the story ends with a lingering question open to interpretation (and one possible explanation that’s truly unsettling). Always-accommodating Sgt. Frank Tubbe makes a welcome return, but scene-stealing clerical floater Jasmine Birdsong proves useful in the probe as well as choosing a candidate for the position she’s temporarily filling. One can only hope she’ll stick around and become a series staple.
The dynamic protagonist leads a smart and indelible whodunit.Pub Date: March 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9985284-0-3
Page Count: 286
Publisher: Two Shadows
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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