This series, now up to three, just keeps getting better, and readers will surely anticipate the protagonist’s next outing.
In Larew’s (Aftermath, 2017, etc.) thriller, Lee Carruthers’ latest case takes her to Hong Kong to check on her ex–CIA boss’s contact.
Though Lee no longer works for Sidney Worthington, she agrees to see if anything is amiss with his friend and Hong Kong contact Henry Wong, who hasn’t made contact in nearly two months. Unfortunately, almost as soon as Lee makes it to Wong Antiques, she spots two strangers leading Henry away. She tails them but gets caught in a frenzied mob of democracy demonstrators. She learns the men took Henry to a bar owned by the criminal triad group Chau Fong. But Lee can’t immediately link the antiques dealer to anything illicit that would involve the triads. Henry’s son, Percy, is equally perplexing. Cops arrested him during the demonstrations (along with others, including Lee), but now Percy, like his dad, is missing. Lee pokes around bank accounts and makes inquiries, but her investigation turns personal when she uncovers a decades-old connection between the Chau Fong and both Sidney and her late father, Bill. The questions only build when there’s another disappearance, followed shortly thereafter by a murder. Larew maintains a relatively simple mystery, which effectively juggles Lee’s multiple predicaments. Her romantic entanglement with Secret Service agent Jim Sanders, for example, is inhibited by his apparently jealous partner, Jennifer Evans. Lee, whose former job entailed tracing criminal money, is meticulous and plainspoken, both of which are often reflected in her dialogue. When someone asks her about Bill, Lee responds, “He’s dead,” or a terser “Dead.” However, she’s formidable in countless ways, from catching men watching or shadowing her to fighting off an assailant via impressive self-defense tactics (and that’s even before she can reach her Glock 26). The story has several worthy twists, though a couple of those are rather bleak.
This series, now up to three, just keeps getting better, and readers will surely anticipate the protagonist’s next outing.Pub Date: Dec. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9910912-9-4
Page Count: 378
Publisher: Artemis Hunter Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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
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