An engrossing crime tale that would make a lean and mean movie.
In this debut novel, the events leading up to the brutal murders of a ranch foreman and his wife unfold through a variety of viewpoints.
“Something bad” has happened on the ranch of Sam Duff, “the big name T.V. broadcaster and part time rancher.” The bodies of foreman Luke Pruitt and his third wife, Deona, have been found in a manure pit while their two children, Leeland, 14, and his preteen sister, Karmen, are missing. Chapters of Burns’ compelling book alternate between Deputy Rob Greenwood’s investigation and the perspectives of the principals and participants involved in the case. These include the ill-fated Luke, who, like his father, Payton, was “meaner-than-shit” and made Benedict Cumberbatch in the film The Power of the Dog look like Roy Rogers. Linda Pruitt, his mother, was “a genuine ranch woman,” whose Ranching Weekly column contained such homespun (and posthumously ironic) wisdom as “Cowboys expect a lot of their families because they expect a lot of themselves,” and who met an unfortunate end. Most heartbreakingly, there is Luke’s abused son, Leeland, who admits to his school counselor that he does not want to be a cowboy. But haunting the narrative is the communal “We,” one voice that guiltily confesses, “We’d seen it coming, and stood by watching it the way we’d watch a dry storm approach across flat land—always thinking we had more time.” This bruising story is less a murder mystery than an unflinching look at a culture and community. Burns writes with a vivid sense of place and ranch life. Dialogue is effectively terse. “I wouldn’t treat my livestock” the way “Luke and Deona Pruitt treated that boy,” one character remarks. Evocative descriptions add rich grace notes (“Only a clarinet could have mimicked the sadness of that boy’s voice”). There are a few positive adult characters who offer compassion and a helping hand, but there is little respite for readers, which may make it hard going for some. As Luke growls at one point, “This is no tea party.”
An engrossing crime tale that would make a lean and mean movie.Pub Date: May 20, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63988-366-0
Page Count: 306
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
As the prosecutor sadly observes: “All this because of a dead buffalo.”
Idyllic Catalina Island turns out to be just as crime infested as the rest of Los Angeles County in the latest series launch by the creator of Harry Bosch, Renée Ballard, and the Lincoln Lawyer.
Det. Sgt. Stilwell has been bounced off the county homicide squad and rusticized to Catalina, where the exclusive Black Marlin Club won’t admit even four-term Avalon Mayor Doug Allen to full membership and the most serious infraction seems to be the killing and cutting up of a buffalo, presumably by Henry Gaston, who operates Island Mystery Tours when he’s not threatening endangered species. All that changes with the discovery of a body sunk in the surrounding waters. The corpse, most recognizable by its streak of purple hair, is that of Leigh-Anne Moss, a Black Marlin server recently fired for fraternizing with members and guests she sees as potential sugar daddies. Stilwell is sufficiently invested in her murder to compete vigorously over jurisdiction with Rex Ahearn, the LA County homicide detective who kept his job when Stilwell lost his. Their rivalry, fueled by mutual contempt, is only the first hint that Stilwell will end up fighting his counterparts in law enforcement and local government at least as hard as he fights crooks like hit man Merris Spivak and Oscar “Baby Head” Terranova, Henry’s boss, who comes under sharper scrutiny when Henry disappears and ends up dead himself. Connelly handles his hero’s obligatory romance with assistant harbormaster Tash Dano and his increasingly wary alliance with assistant D.A. Monika Juarez with equal professionalism, and if the wrap-up leaves some loose ends dangling, well, that’s what franchises are for.
As the prosecutor sadly observes: “All this because of a dead buffalo.”Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9780316588485
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
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