A dismal sojourn in some very unpleasant company.
Irish crime family rules the rackets in 1970s London.
British crime writer Cole’s first novel to be published in the United States is a gritty exploration of the rise and fall of a peculiarly Celtic mob dynasty. The depth of characterization that distinguished The Sopranos and The Godfather is sorely lacking here. Patrick Brodie is the undisputed kingpin of drug, gambling and prostitution operations in London’s vast underworld, thanks to his carefully forged alliances with muscle—thug enforcers like the Williams brothers—and ethnic power bases, such as the Caribbean African element, led by Spider and his Rastafarian crew. Pat marries Lil, shy illegitimate daughter of Annie, who’s always resented Lil, especially when the latter becomes her meal ticket. Lil and Patrick are a true love match, although as Lil gives birth to four children, she grows increasingly impatient with Patrick’s irregular hours—“skulduggery” is not a nine-to-five job. Patrick, ever vigilant for incipient plots to topple him, takes spectacular revenge on a few errant snitches, former allies and crooked cops, but new mobsters are amassing influence. The traitorous Williams brothers aim to unseat Brodie and Spider once and for all. At home, Lil, pregnant with her fifth, brutally punishes her second son, kiddie sociopath Lance, for pushing a six-year-old girl off the school bus. Shortly before eldest son Patrick Jr.’s long-planned lavish tenth birthday party, the Williamses ambush and assassinate Patrick in the family foyer. In the aftermath of Patrick’s removal, his archrival Lenny takes over, eliminating the brawny but brainless Williamses. Lil is forced to prostitute herself to Lenny to support her family. But Patrick Jr. is getting older and stronger every day and bears an uncanny resemblance, in looks and temperament, to his father. Under the radar, Lance, abetted by adoring granny Annie, is committing his most egregious crimes in the Brodie home. Cole’s repetitious analyses of family dynamics and gang politics renders the book at least a third too long.
A dismal sojourn in some very unpleasant company.Pub Date: July 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-446-17996-6
Page Count: 494
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2008
An unusual and stylish story of love and murder—less a mystery than a study of emotions and cultural mores.
In Japan, a daughter explores the crime of passion that took her mother’s life.
Sumiko was just 7 when her mother died and her father moved away; she was raised by her grandfather, who has always maintained that her mother was killed in a car accident. Twenty years later, she answers a phone call meant for him from a prison administrator with information about inmate Kaitarō Nakamura; when the caller realizes whom she is speaking with, she hangs up. With just this detail, Sumiko begins an obsessive quest. She turns up an article headlined “WAKARESASEYA AGENT GOES TOO FAR?” from which she learns that Kaitarō Nakamura was an agent in the “marriage breakup” industry. He was hired by her father to seduce her mother in order to provide grounds for divorce. Nakamura claims that he and her mother had fallen in love and were about to start a new life together. When Sumiko visits Nakamura's defense attorney, the woman hands over all her files and videotaped interviews with her client. Weaving through the story of Sumiko’s search and her recollections of her childhood is the story of her mother and her lover, from the moment he pretended to meet her accidentally at the market and moving inexorably to the murder scene. Scott is a Singaporean British writer born and raised in Southeast Asia; her debut is inspired by a 2010 case in Tokyo and based on years of research. The book proceeds slowly, lingering on enjoyable details of Japanese landscape and food but perhaps not adding enough new information to maintain the level of interest set by the sensational details in the first pages.
An unusual and stylish story of love and murder—less a mystery than a study of emotions and cultural mores.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-385-54470-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
Realistically detailed, poetically charged, and utterly satisfying: apparently there’s nothing Egan can’t do.
After stretching the boundaries of fiction in myriad ways (including a short story written in Tweets), Pulitzer Prize winner Egan (A Visit from the Goon Squad, 2010, etc.) does perhaps the only thing left that could surprise: she writes a thoroughly traditional novel.
It shouldn’t really be surprising, since even Egan’s most experimental work has been rich in characters and firmly grounded in sharp observation of the society around them. Here, she brings those qualities to a portrait of New York City during the Depression and World War II. We meet 12-year-old Anna Kerrigan accompanying her adored father, Eddie, to the Manhattan Beach home of suave mobster Dexter Styles. Just scraping by “in the dregs of 1934,” Eddie is lobbying Styles for a job; he’s sick of acting as bagman for a crooked union official, and he badly needs money to buy a wheelchair for his severely disabled younger daughter, Lydia. Having rapidly set up these situations fraught with conflict, Egan flashes forward several years: Anna is 19 and working at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, the sole support of Lydia and their mother since Eddie disappeared five years earlier. Adult Anna is feisty enough to elbow her way into a job as the yard’s first female diver and reckless enough, after she runs into him at one of his nightclubs, to fall into a one-night stand with Dexter, who initially doesn’t realize whose daughter she is. Disastrous consequences ensue for them both but only after Egan has expertly intertwined three narratives to show us what happened to Eddie while drawing us into Anna’s and Dexter’s complicated longings and aspirations. The Atlantic and Indian oceans play significant roles in a novel saturated by the sense of water as a vehicle of destiny and a symbol of continuity (epigraph by Melville, naturally). A fatal outcome for one appealing protagonist is balanced by Shakespearean reconciliation and renewal for others in a tender, haunting conclusion.
Realistically detailed, poetically charged, and utterly satisfying: apparently there’s nothing Egan can’t do.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4767-1673-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
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