In this engrossing and atmospheric tale, a racially charged killing reveals the fissures of an intricately drawn St. Louis...
A police officer investigates the murder of a singer amid racial and ethnic tensions in the mid-20th-century Midwest.
In this historical novel, Herder (Krazee Mouse Blues, 2015, etc.) introduces a variety of memorable characters who populate the St. Louis suburb of Marecage in 1963. Home to prostitutes, drug dealers, mobsters, and cops who subscribe to a wide range of moralities, Marecage is a low-rent district along the Mississippi River (“Several square blocks of rickety-brick nightclubs, taverns, flop joints, whorehouses, and warehouses, all squeezed along a crumbling cobblestone levee as if the city had swept all its filth into a pile and left it on the banks of the Mississippi for the next big flood to wash it away”). When crooner Eddie Devine is found dead in a Marecage motel room shortly after performing to an adoring, mixed-race crowd, Tony Waluska is among the police officers assigned to investigate. As the initial bungling of the crime scene unravels, Tony’s pursuit of the truth—during his breaks from “the worlds of smack and Jack”)—puts him at odds with the city’s power brokers and the people who have an interest in sweeping Devine’s death under the rug. Tony leaves town, returning in 1981 and renewing his interest in the cold case just as the city’s first African-American mayoral candidate would prefer to see it forgotten. Herder has a talent for developing his characters’ voices, not only in dialogue, but also in their frequent internal monologues (“Tony Waluska, well, he floats between the lines, hugging and kissing everyone, knowing everyone, a cop with a smile as big as his hands”). But the frequent use of racial slurs, while appropriate to the characters, grows grating. The sprawling cast of secondary players contains striking and fully developed figures, from ex-stripper Gloria Hallelujah to well-intentioned priest Father Piechowski. Although readers will likely lose the main thread of the plot among the occasionally wandering backstory, Herder ultimately provides an engaging mystery with a satisfying resolution.
In this engrossing and atmospheric tale, a racially charged killing reveals the fissures of an intricately drawn St. Louis community.Pub Date: Dec. 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5229-8223-4
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Bison Blues Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2018
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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