A slow-building murder tale, but the complicated hero and serpentine wrap-up make it a worthy mystery.
A Justice Department investigator’s latest case is the killing of a Civil War re-enactor, his body cropping up on Maryland’s Antietam Battlefield in this debut thriller.
A body on Park Service property makes it federal jurisdiction, or “close enough” for Felix Allaben to take the murder case. Allaben knows the victim, Curtis Gwynn, dead from a gunshot wound and dressed in a Union uniform. Gwynn was a whistleblower against dirty cops back when he and Allaben were at the Baltimore Police Department. And a week before his death, he called Allaben, convinced that a Toyota had tried to run him over. Allaben’s certainly not in want of suspects, and not just irate police officers. Gwynn had an affair with a married woman and, on the night of his murder, had argued with various people at a local tavern. When the park ranger who found Gwynn’s body turns up dead, also on the battlefield, authorities surmise it’s a mere accident––a fall from the observation tower. But there may be something else going on, as evidenced by the baseball bat–wielding men who warn Allaben to stop his meddling. Allaben’s probe leads him to a potentially dangerous militia group and a rather dubious politician. Then the investigator nearly dies in a fire, which could mean that the thugs are making good on their threat. While the protagonist remains delightfully complex and sympathetic, he is definitely flawed. He recently lost his wife, Rebecca, at the hands of a mugger who shot them both. Rebecca was psychologically unwell, and Allaben hadn’t exactly been faithful to her. Notwithstanding, as an investigator, he more than excels. Allaben, for example, often asks questions when he knows the answers, like the meaning behind a snake tattoo, an emblem for the militia group. Lee and Fleury pile on probable killers and clues, but Allaben himself sporadically acknowledges the “vague” evidence and the fact that, still late in the story, he’s “getting nowhere.” The final act, however, kicks red herrings to the wayside and zeroes in on a gratifying reveal––with an extra twist at the very end.
A slow-building murder tale, but the complicated hero and serpentine wrap-up make it a worthy mystery.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-942146-26-1
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Garn Press
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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