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
New York is colonized by giant talking canines in newcomer Bakis's wry variation on the traditional shaggy dog story. Imagination is the key here. We need to understand that at the end of the 19th century a crazed German biologist named Augustus Rank performed a succession of medical experiments that resulted in a weird genetic mutation of his subjects and created a race of ``monster dogs''—giant rottweilers and Dobermans who can speak and walk on their hind legs. After living for more than a hundred years in the seclusion of a remote Canadian settlement called Rankstadt, they are forced to move in the year 2008 to New York (where 150 of them take up residence at the Plaza Hotel) when Rankstadt is destroyed. In their 19th-century garb—Prussian military uniforms for the ``men,'' bustles for the ``women''—they cut impressive figures on the streets of Manhattan, where they quickly become celebrities and philanthropists. At Christmas they parade down Fifth Avenue in sleighs, and shortly after their arrival they construct an enormous Bavarian castle on the Lower East Side. When an NYU coed named Cleo Pira writes about them for a local newspaper, the dogs adopt her as their spokesperson and bring her into the inner life of their society. From Cleo's perspective the dogs are benign, quaint, and deeply tragic, and the more fascinated she becomes by their history—both as they relate it to her and as she discovers it for herself through Rank's own archives—the darker and more doomed their society appears. By the time Cleo has learned the secrets contained in Rank's past, it's too late to save his descendants, who have unknowingly brought about their own destruction. Serious enough, but also funny and imaginative: a vivid parable that manages to amuse even as it perplexes and intrigues.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-374-18987-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
A steamy, glitzy, and tender tale of college intrigue.
In this opener to Kennedy’s (Hot & Bothered, 2017, etc.) Briar U romance series, two likable students keep getting their signals crossed.
Twenty-one-year-old Summer Heyward-Di Laurentis is expelled from Brown University in the middle of her junior year because she was responsible for a fire at the Kappa Beta Nu sorority house. Fortunately, her father has connections, so she’s now enrolled in Briar University, a prestigious institution about an hour outside Boston. But as she’s about to move into Briar’s Kappa Beta Nu house, she’s asked to leave by the sisters, who don’t want her besmirching their reputation. Her older brother Dean, who’s a former Briar hockey star, comes to her rescue; his buddies, who are still on the hockey team, need a fourth roommate for their townhouse. Three good-looking hockey jocks and a very rich, gorgeous fashion major under the same roof—what could go wrong? Summer becomes quickly infatuated with one of her housemates: Dean’s best friend Colin “Fitzy” Fitzgerald. There’s a definite spark between them, and they exchange smoldering looks, but the tattooed Fitzy, who’s also a video game reviewer and designer, is an introvert who prefers no “drama” in his life. Summer, however, is a charming extrovert, although she has an inferiority complex about her flagging scholastic acumen. As the story goes on, the pair seem to misinterpret each other’s every move. Meanwhile, another roommate and potential suitor, Hunter Davenport, is waiting in the wings. Kennedy’s novel is full of sex, alcohol, and college-level profanity, but it never becomes formulaic. The author adroitly employs snappy dialogue, steady pacing, and humor, as in a scene at a runway fashion show featuring Briar jocks parading in Summer-designed swimwear. The book also manages to touch on some serious subjects, including learning disabilities and abusive behavior by faculty members. Summer and Fitzy’s repeated stumbles propel the plot through engaging twists and turns; the characters trade off narrating the story, which gives each of them a chance to reveal some substance.
A steamy, glitzy, and tender tale of college intrigue.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-72482-199-7
Page Count: 372
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 28, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
