This thriller can’t decide if it wants to entertain or convert.
This bold Christian thriller sees a covert organization go to war against the supernatural.
In 1994, Dominic “Nick” Moreau’s wife and child were killed by what he described as a werewolf. The authorities, though, believed him to be the true murderer and locked him up. Enter Christopher Griffin, who interviewed Nick in prison, posing as an FBI agent, and explained his work for Knightlight—a group in God’s service that battles supernatural evil. Griffin invited Nick—himself a dedicated Christian with military experience—to join. Now codenamed Rock, Nick leads a Trinity squad that eliminates vampires, werewolves and other demonic hybrids fallen from God’s grace. Rock’s latest mission involves investigating Malcolm Carson, a famous sasquatch hunter who has assembled a massive hunting party to find his quarry in Montgomery County, Ind. The area has suffered a rash of grisly slayings that remind Rock of the beast that killed his family. Responsible for the chaos is Darlene, the mild-mannered leader of a satanic cult who helps foment the darkness that’s been brewing since Israel became a nation in 1947. Rock’s squad intends to shine a light on Darlene while protecting the misguided Carson and his lovely daughter, Crystal. Debut author Rossi brings clean action and humor to the adventure, which occasionally pops with one-liners: “Whatever Hell spat out, Knightlight was there to engage and return to its pit.” But much of the prose can be stilted: “The broad-brimmed hat that covered his head had absorbed much sweat in the heat of the day and was finally drying in the slight night breeze of the still very warm evening.” The largest problems, though, are the defensive political screeds that interrupt the narrative. For instance, a discussion on terrorism is full of bolded, italicized phrases, such as: “Freedom itself was shamed that day.” There’s also a tendency toward intellectual blandness, culminating in the line: “Artists, Crystal thought, who can understand them?”
This thriller can’t decide if it wants to entertain or convert.Pub Date: April 26, 2013
ISBN: 978-1452572222
Page Count: 498
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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