Alive with a devilish plot, the book takes a satisfying, twisted journey into evil.
From debut author Masters comes a novel about the sinister side of a small town and the local sheriff’s attempts to uncover the truth.
Chris Samuels takes the job of sheriff in the town of Plummet, New York, in order to escape the many dangers he faced as a police officer in the Bronx. While quaint, the town is hardly isolated: “The best part of Plummet was that you didn’t feel you were stuck in the boondocks…Route 9A conveniently ran parallel to the town.” Plummet isn’t without its troubled past. Though long dead, the seedy figure of Thorn Mastema—“Besides gambling and loan sharking, the man was into child pornography, drugs, prostitution, and illegal abortions”—lives on in both the nursing home that still bears his name and his protégé, one Jason Torrent, who runs the place. When a 3-month-old baby goes missing, Torrent offers a $500,000 reward, even though Sheriff Samuels feels he is a prime suspect. It’s a suspicion that Samuels is warned against voicing. As the mayor explains, “You can’t start accusing a man like Torrent about a kidnapping.” Powerful, mysterious, and unpleasant in social situations, Torrent is not a man to be trifled with, but how else can the sheriff do his job? Populated with local characters, including a portly deputy and a kindhearted priest, the story incorporates everyday struggles and diabolical occurrences. For example, a book falls open to a page of a “drawing rendered in blood of a child with a dagger hovering over his heart, surrounded by six people with anguish and pain etched on their faces.” While certain portions involving occult practices may prove too obvious for some readers (“The Fourth Gateway of Hell shall be opened when Satan tastes the blood of a righteous one and an evil one”), those intrigued by a town with a streak of wickedness will feel right at home with the sheriff and his search for answers, particularly as the answers become ever more troubling.
Alive with a devilish plot, the book takes a satisfying, twisted journey into evil.Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-1500518653
Page Count: 304
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 10, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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