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
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.
Two brothers—one a lawyer, one a chess prodigy—work through the death of their father, their complicated romantic lives, and their even more tangled relationship with each other.
Ten years separate the Koubek brothers. In his early 30s, Peter has turned his past as a university debating champ into a career as a progressive lawyer in Dublin. Ivan is just out of college, struggling to make ends meet through freelance data analysis and reckoning with his recent free fall in the world chess rankings. When their father dies of cancer, the cracks in the brothers’ relationship widen. “Complete oddball” Ivan falls in love with an older woman, an arts center employee, which freaks Peter out. Peter juggles two women at once: free-spirited college student Naomi and his ex-girlfriend Sylvia, whose life has changed drastically since a car accident left her in chronic pain. Emotional chaos abounds. Rooney has struck a satisfying blend of the things she’s best at—sensitively rendered characters, intimacies, consideration of social and philosophical issues—with newer moves. Having the book’s protagonists navigating a familial rather than romantic relationship seems a natural next step for Rooney, with her astutely empathic perception, and the sections from Peter’s point of view show Rooney pushing her style into new territory with clipped, fragmented, almost impressionistic sentences. (Peter on Sylvia: “Must wonder what he’s really here for: repentance, maybe. Bless me for I have. Not like that, he wants to tell her. Why then. Terror of solitude.”) The risk: Peter comes across as a slightly blurry character, even to himself—he’s no match for the indelible Ivan—so readers may find these sections less propulsive at best or over-stylized at worst. Overall, though, the pages still fly; the characters remain reach-out-and-touch-them real.
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9780374602635
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 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.
