A diabolically forceful crime novel that takes all the noir tropes and uses them in foreign territory to great effect.
A dogged investigative journalist hunts a killer with a deeply personal agenda in contemporary Spain.
Journalist and crime novelist Fernandez presents a dramatic crime story in his first book to be translated into English. Set in present-day Spain, the novel grapples with the long shadow of Franco and his government’s many, many trespasses against its people. At its heart is a ruthless killer executing a series of seemingly unconnected victims that include a nun, a banker, and other professionals who seem to have no ties to the killer’s political agenda. We experience Fernandez’s crisp crime story through the eyes of Diego Martin, whose investigative radio show exposes the corrupt and the criminals in society. Martin name-checks James Ellroy, and this sprawling yet taut crime novel recalls Ellroy’s percussive style. Diego has gotten involved with Isabel Ferrer, an attorney who has launched a campaign to expose a secret plot under Franco’s dictatorship to steal babies from their mothers. Fernandez’s prose is tight, and his descriptions of life under a corrupt government might well reflect our own current fractures in society. “Overload,” he writes. “Just too much. Too many strange occurrences. Too many deaths. Too many special editions. Too many bombs exploding at once. Too many coincidences. Too many unanswered questions.” Diego is assisted by two able comrades in David Ponce, a sitting judge navigating the country’s political minefields, and Ana Durán, a transgender private eye. The threats to them are palpable and familiar. “Threats like these are in their line of work,” Fernandez writes. “They have seen plenty of others. These attacks tell them one thing, though: they are making some people uncomfortable. Who? People in power, most likely, and they are starting to come out from the shadows.” Another character sums up the corruption they expose: “People knew right up to the highest echelons of power, and no one said a thing.”
A diabolically forceful crime novel that takes all the noir tropes and uses them in foreign territory to great effect.Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-62872-743-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2018
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
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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