An engaging mystery that offers plenty of potential for a planned series.
IRS agent Mark Douglas will stop at nothing to find his boss’s killer in this debut novel.
This book’s subtitle is Tales of a Badass IRS Agent; usually, in popular culture, “badass” and “IRS” are mutually exclusive terms. The agency’s functionaries are generally portrayed as milquetoast, like Will Ferrell in the 2006 film Stranger than Fiction. Here, Mark Douglas refers to himself as a “glorified accountant,” but he’s also an ex-Marine who leads his “bang-squad,” “the United States government’s own repo men,” on raids to seize tax-cheats’ money or possessions in order to square them with Uncle Sam. One such raid opens the story, as the squad—including 30-year veteran Harry Salt, newbie Miguel, and “weird” Wooly Bob—recovers $15,500 hidden in a Colt 45 can. The group’s camaraderie is further illustrated in the next scene—a barroom brawl with a man they call the “Human Fire Hydrant” and five of his friends after he gets too handsy with the squad’s favorite waitress. These scenes are played for laughs, but as Douglas’ boss, Lila Everston, notes, “You boys love playing cowboys and tax evaders. But someone’s gonna get hurt one of these days.” Tragically, that someone is Lila, whom Douglas considers to be “the big sister I should have had.” He teams up with an FBI wonk with the nickname “Tightass” to avenge her death. Zaslove, an award-winning writer of children’s TV programming (including The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, for which he earned a Humanitas Prize), delivers a series launcher that’s decidedly and bracingly not for kids. There are several groanworthy punchlines, which can be taxing (“At least it wasn’t a six-foot, seven-inch albino Texan singing the aria from Mozart’s Don Giovanni and accompanying himself on a Peruvian goat’s-hoof rattle”). But for the most part, this inaugural case is pleasingly complex. Lila’s demise comes early, so she doesn’t make a very strong impression, but readers will still feel Douglas’ loss. While processing his anger, the protagonist recalls when he stood up to his abusive stepfather in what may be the book’s most effective section.
An engaging mystery that offers plenty of potential for a planned series.Pub Date: April 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9712374-8-3
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Aperient Press
Review Posted Online: July 12, 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
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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