The authors hit this one out of the park; a highly recommended mystery.
In this debut Chicago-set crime novel, police nickname a brutal serial killer Slugger because he beats his victims with a “bat-like weapon” and leaves a folded, collectible baseball card.
Slugger preys on hookers on the South Side of the city. Detective Kyle McNally and his longtime partner, Sam Weller, investigate the third murdered woman found in Canarytown, “the tavern district of south-central Chicago.” Looking for a lead, Kyle reaches out to informant Eddie Caffey, who “could smell a U.S. Grant from a block away.” But Eddie’s now skittish to talk because he says he saw another informant take a bullet to the head by a dirty cop whose identity isn’t clear. Splotchy-faced Cmdr. Alfred “Al” Rouse, with a broad nose featuring “a small vertical cleft that reminded Kyle of a miniature woman’s ass,” pressures the detective to solve the serial killer case. When another mangled corpse is found, Kyle visits the morgue to talk to the stone-faced but shapely legged county medical examiner, Dr. Mykel Hartley, about the time of death and the mutilation of the body. If it’s the same murderer, he broke from his modus operandi in several ways, including placing the victim in a cemetery far from Canarytown. Detective Liz Dumont—a petite, dedicated “dynamo” who’s “easy on the eyes, too”—mulls if there could be a copycat killer. McCullough and Boydston get a lot of credit for not portraying Kyle as the flawless hunk on the force. Although described as handsome, with a “body that looked well-tended,” he can be impatient and short-tempered. The divorced bourbon drinker doesn’t look for love, but it’s enjoyable—and not overdone—when he finds it. More sensitive readers may balk at the descriptions of mutilated bodies. But fans of gritty crime stories and methodical police work will find the book a page-turner, complete with notable characters, dialogue, and descriptions (“He guessed her at six foot two and skinny as a Ball Park frank”). Names and depictions of Chicago attractions and streets are accurate, with the exception that Canarytown is most likely a stand-in for Canaryville, a community on the city’s South Side that was originally a largely Irish neighborhood.
The authors hit this one out of the park; a highly recommended mystery.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Kurti Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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