This adventure offers an entertaining, if occasionally uneven, mix of the serious and the silly.
A screenwriter follows a former employee to a strange resort in this comedic crime novel set in California.
Rowland follows up his previous work, Cinematic Immunity (2020), with another caper starring Sam “Samson” Agonistes. Sam is a “fifty-something bald guy” who formerly worked as a grip in Hollywood and is now a screenwriter. He runs Samson Productions with the activist-turned-screenwriter Petunia “Una” Biggars. Samson Productions is also the employer of an assistant named Ja’k. Ja’k is not very good at his job. Yet when Ja’k declares that he is quitting, Sam and Una feel that something is amiss. The suspicion proves correct when Sam follows Ja’k all the way from Los Angeles to a desolate place past San Diego called Rancho de Los Niños Perdidos. Though it claims to be a resort of sorts, Sam, whose knowledge of cinema includes a number of film noirs, can tell that all is not well. To make matters worse, Sam’s estranged son, Atticus, is involved. Atticus is the opposite of his Prius-driving, multiculturally inclined father. Atticus is a blatant racist with designs on a career in politics. He also tried to kill his father once. Can Sam figure out what is going on at Rancho de Los Niños Perdidos? Even better, can he lend a hand in stopping it? Although Sam’s trials involve some complicated family issues (which, aside from his son, include a veterinarian daughter and a brother-in-law who calls himself Guppy), events progress quickly. For a narrative that includes torture and some other difficult matters, it all occurs with a flair for the comical. Sam is the type of California driver who keeps a blow-up doll in his vehicle so he can use the carpool lane. Rather than be embarrassed by taking advantage of the loophole, he talks to his doll as if she were a real person. He even calls her Wifey. In other episodes, the dark kookiness can become too fantastical. A pivotal moment involves a normally friendly dog attacking a would-be rapist. The scene is neither particularly funny nor particularly believable. Nevertheless, Rowland’s engaging story remains tense throughout. Sam may be laughable at times, but he ends up dealing with some sufficiently dire situations.
This adventure offers an entertaining, if occasionally uneven, mix of the serious and the silly.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 495
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Hokey plot, good fun.
A business executive becomes an unjustly wanted man.
Walter Nash attends his estranged father Tiberius’ funeral, where Ty’s Army buddy, Shock, rips into him for not being the kind of man the Vietnam vet Ty was. Instead, Nash is the successful head of acquisitions for Sybaritic Investments, where he earns a handsome paycheck that supports his wife, Judith, and his teenage daughter, Maggie. An FBI agent approaches Nash after the funeral and asks him to be a mole in his company, because the feds consider chief executive Rhett Temple “a criminal consorting with some very dangerous people.” It’s “a chance to be a hero,” the agent says, while admitting that Nash’s personal and financial risks are immense. Indeed, readers soon find Temple and a cohort standing over a fresh corpse and wondering what to do with it. Temple is not an especially talented executive, and he frets that his hated father, the chairman of the board, will eventually replace him with Nash. (Father-son relationships are not glorified in this tale.) Temple is cartoonishly rotten. He answers to a mysterious woman in Asia, whom he rightly fears. He kills. He beds various women including Judith, whom he tries to turn against Nash. The story’s dramatic turn follows Maggie’s kidnapping, where Nash is wrongly accused. Believing Nash’s innocence, Shock helps him change completely with intense exercise, bulking up and tattooing his body, and learning how to fight and kill. Eventually he looks nothing like the dweeb who’d once taken up tennis instead of football, much to Ty’s undying disgust. Finding the victim and the kidnappers becomes his sole mission. As a child watching his father hunt, Nash could never have killed a living thing. But with his old life over—now he will kill, and he will take any risks necessary. His transformation is implausible, though at least he’s not green like the Incredible Hulk. Loose ends abound by the end as he ignores a plea to “not get on that damn plane,” so a sequel is a necessity.
Hokey plot, good fun.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781538757987
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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