A fast-paced, smartly written crime story that’s only the first shot in what could be a high-octane series.
From Young (Off the Grid, 2013, etc.), an intense police procedural focusing on the murders of Sonoma County gang members orchestrated from within Pelican Bay State Prison, one of California’s maximum security facilities.
An execution-style murder goes down after dark at an abandoned winery. When police detective Tom Kagan arrives at the scene, he sees the gang-tatted dead body and thinks, “This death, like all the others, gives me a reason to live.” Did someone within the victim’s own organization––the Nuestra Familia––pull the trigger, or was the shooter a member of a rival Latino gang? Readers will know the answer (the book’s title is a clue) before Kagan and his crew do, but no matter; the novel is riveting from the opening shot to the parting rounds of bullets. As the body count rises inside and outside of Pelican Bay, Kagan’s reason to live expands to include protecting his wife against the vividly etched, evil man named Ghost. The chilling deadness of Ghost’s eyes and his proclamations haunt Kagan. A lifer, the prisoner exerts tremendous gang control behind bars and beyond them; he has “arms and legs out on the street.” Kagan, emotionally scarred from a past family tragedy, has a long-simmering personal stake in making sure Ghost gets his due instead of his dreams––“cloudless blue skies, long sandy beaches, and the best brews money could buy. And women. Plenty of women.” The author, a 26-year veteran of the Santa Rosa Police Department, writes convincingly about how gang members in and out of prison think; how they communicate with one another; and how they manipulate underlings, wives and other family members. He makes a convincing case that sometimes the only way a gang member can stay alive is to take someone’s “wind”––“to make sure he doesn’t breathe anymore.” Young is also fluent in police-speak—law enforcement procedures, dialogue and actions ring true—and character building: Female characters are smart, tough and capable, while relationships seem genuine, and clichéd male/female encounters are absent, in spite of the occasional whiff of perfume.
A fast-paced, smartly written crime story that’s only the first shot in what could be a high-octane series.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2012
ISBN: 978-0983266389
Page Count: 346
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
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
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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