First-timer Andrews, a former journalist and once an antiques “picker” herself, offers deft plotting, sly humor, and...
Sassy gal hunts for antiques in Savannah’s street junk—and tracks down a killer.
Eloise Foley (“Weezie” to her devoted friends) has been forced to move out of the 1858 townhouse she shared with her obnoxious ex-husband, Talmadge Evans III, the blue-blooded heir to an old southern name and fortune. He got the townhouse, where he now lives with his new flame, Caroline DeSantos, and Weezie got the charming carriage house just behind it, big enough for her and her mutt Jethro, who always pees on Caroline’s camellias. Weezie’s mother frets about Weezie having no job, husband, or prospects—and then BeBe Loudermilk, Weezie’s best bud, introduces her to the sexy new chef at the restaurant she owns. Dan Stipanek is ruggedly handsome—and wouldn’t you know it, Weezie knew him way back when they used to make out under the stars at Beaulieu, an antebellum house once owned by the Mullinaxes, the last of whom recently died at 97, without an heir, so that an estate sale has been planned. Weezie sneaks into the house in the dead of night to get a better look before any choice items are snapped up by dealers, and she spots a unique corner cabinet of burled elm that may have been carved by a master carpenter, once a slave. If she could buy and resell it, she’d have enough money to open her own shop. Weezie continues to prowl through the old manse, opens a closet door—and out tumbles the body of Caroline DeSantos! For the police, Weezie’s the number one suspect, but they don’t have evidence to arrest her. Meanwhile, she keeps looking for the corner cabinet, which has disappeared. Could wicked antiques-dealer Lewis Hargeaves be mixed up in all this?
First-timer Andrews, a former journalist and once an antiques “picker” herself, offers deft plotting, sly humor, and appealing characters: pure fun.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-06-019958-X
Page Count: 416
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2001
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
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SEEN & HEARD
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