Despite the metaphysical trappings of Existential Big Themes, it’s hard to care too deeply about the characters, who remain...
A dreamlike novel of good and evil mind games.
Bad girl Jane Charlotte has been arrested for murder and is being interrogated by a doctor about her proclivity for offing bad guys, especially actual or accused child molesters. She claims to be a member of a secret organization whose job it is to engage in vigilante justice by killing evil people. No guilt, no accountability, no consequences. Until her arrest, Jane had been one of the most efficient killers in the organization and had both impressed and distressed her mentors by killing two evildoers rather than one in her probation period. (She was supposed to make a choice.) Ruff (Set This House in Order, 2003, etc.) structures his novel largely as a series of dialogues between doctor and “patient,” though as Jane’s obsessions become more intense and her rationalizations more acute, she engages in increasingly bizarre and paranoid monologues. In extended flashbacks, we learn of Jane’s troubled past, of her dysfunctional mother and of her contentious relationship with her brother Phil, whom she used to terrorize with tales of gypsy child-robbers. Along the way, she links up with a creepy cast of characters who haunt her nightmarish life, including harlequins, clowns, a feisty homeless woman and the sociopathic owner of a railroad hobby shop. She eventually meets “bad Jane,” who opines that “evil…is just so much cooler than even you know.” This double works for The Force, a counter-organization dedicated to the destruction of the good. In a dizzying set of final reversals, we learn once again that nothing is as it seems, for the doctor and the “twin” Janes have their own duplicitous agendas.
Despite the metaphysical trappings of Existential Big Themes, it’s hard to care too deeply about the characters, who remain intellectual cardboard cutouts.Pub Date: July 24, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-06-124041-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2007
Part budding romance, part compelling backstory, part prescient tale of racism: provocative on all fronts without being...
In the wake of family tragedy, does an oldest sister’s disappearance point to something even more nefarious?
As a child in Bartonville, Oregon, Emily Mills saw something terrible that she hasn’t been able to forget for 20 years. Even worse than seeing the body of her father, who was white, hanging from a tree in the backyard was seeing her older sister, Tara, at the scene of the crime. Tara leaves town and isn’t heard from again, so Emily can’t ask what she was doing there the fateful night their father was murdered. When their mother takes her own life shortly afterward, Emily and her youngest sister, Madison, never recover from the multiple traumas. Although they do their best to go on running Barton Diner, the family restaurant, Emily fears that her questions may never be answered. Though Chet Carlson was caught and eventually confessed to the crime, he’s still in prison when history seems to repeat itself through a double murder of interracial couple Sean and Lindsay Fitch, with Emily once again cast as the person who finds the bodies. Sean has a KKK sign carved into his head, which reminds Emily of whisperings about her father's racist connections. How else might the crimes be related? Rightfully not trusting the police to do a thorough investigation, Emily calls the FBI, which dispatches agents Zander Wells and Ava McLane to investigate. Elliot (Bred in the Bone, 2019) seems less interested in setting Emily up as part of the crime than in pairing her romantically with Zander. That’s just as well, because the who and why of the crimes feels almost incidental rather than displaying a deeper connection to any larger theme.
Part budding romance, part compelling backstory, part prescient tale of racism: provocative on all fronts without being quite satisfying on any.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5420-0672-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
Be warned: It's a stay-up-all-night kind of book. Compulsively readable.
Amy Whey’s sins come back to haunt her when she’s extorted for money by a beautiful stranger in Jackson’s (The Almost Sisters, 2017, etc.) first thriller.
It was supposed to be book club as usual: a group of suburban mothers gathering to talk over a glass of wine or two and then going home to bed. But when new neighbor Angelica Roux shows up at hostess Amy’s door, it doesn’t take long for all hell to break loose. The booze flows freely, and soon the women are engaged in a game: What is the worst thing you did today? This week? This month? In your life? There are many women in the gathering with secrets to protect, but none more than Amy, who, as a teenager, committed a terrible crime that almost destroyed her. Saved by her love for diving, and then by meeting her husband and stepdaughter, Amy has worked hard to build a normal, stable life; she even has a new baby. Angelica has come to threaten all of this; she clearly knows about Amy’s past and will expose her to her loved ones if Amy doesn’t pay her. As Amy tries desperately to outscheme Angelica, she also realizes just how much she has to fight for—and what she might be willing to do to keep her family safe and her secrets buried. Jackson’s novel is chock-full of dramatic reveals and twisty turns, but she paces them out well, dropping them like regularly spaced bombshells. Just when the reader thinks they know what might lie at the heart of the novel, the ground shifts seismically, and the truth removes again to a distance. It’s skillfully done. Amy herself is an openly flawed and relatable character fighting to keep sacred the one thing she values most: her normal, loving, messy life.
Be warned: It's a stay-up-all-night kind of book. Compulsively readable.Pub Date: July 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-285531-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
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