A high-octane story for readers who like a pinch of history with their crime fiction.
Con artists and charlatans take advantage of the building boom in 1920s Florida in Mellon’s historical novel.
In Target City, Florida, Harry Easton has it made: Sheltering under the friendship of the mayor and sheriff and married to the beautiful Gabe, he runs a successful business conning people out of money for stocks, shares, and property. When Regina Siddons, who is the daughter of the founder of Target City and incredibly rich, invites Harry and Gabe to her home, Harry crosses paths with Irishman Sylvanus O’Moira. O’Moira, a charlatan and mystic, suggests that he and Harry could go into business together to swindle the old woman, leading Harry down a dangerous path far beyond any risks he has taken before. The narrative plumbs the rich world of Prohibition-era Florida, conveying the heady atmosphere of a populace scrounging to make a dollar in this expanding Southern haven, “an idyllic, tropic utopia where money lay in the streets, only waiting to be picked up.” The depth of Mellon’s historical research is clear, from the specific guns referenced to champagne imports from Cuba, providing a fascinating window into the period. The plot is occasionally hard to follow; the author’s predilection for dialogue-rich scenes puts the reader at the heart of the action; however, with myriad names flying about from the very beginning, the story gets a little confusing in the first few chapters. The main characters who emerge, however, dominate the pages with their vibrant personalities—particularly the repulsive, grasping O’Moira and the likable rogue Harry, whose repartee will keep readers hooked throughout the short novel. The text’s brevity supports the punchiness of the narrative, though the ending feels a little abrupt. One hopes this indicates a potential sequel.
A high-octane story for readers who like a pinch of history with their crime fiction.Pub Date: May 20, 2024
ISBN: 9798324148768
Page Count: 146
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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