Even with an ending some might find abrupt, Tomlinson’s confidence in his characters will have readers ready for his...
Life isn’t easy for Colleen Hayes in 1978 San Francisco. She’s an ex-con who hopes her daughter will want her back in her life. She needs to keep her sketchy security job so her parole won’t be revoked. And when a dying rich man hires her to find who murdered his daughter 11 years ago, Colleen will find her own life in danger.
When Colleen learned that her husband had been abusing their 8-year-old daughter, Pamela, Colleen killed him. She served 9 years in prison, and when she got out in 1977, she came to San Francisco to search for Pamela. Instead, she ended up helping a cop find the killer of Pamela’s friend. Now, a year later, it’s that tenacity that wealthy Edward Copeland values. His teenage daughter, Margaret, was murdered in 1967, her killer never found. Copeland, along with his surviving daughter, Alex, wants Colleen to find any answers while he’s still alive. Colleen’s questions, though, lead to another murder and put her own life in danger. Tomlinson (The Darknet File, 2019, etc.) deftly makes us not only understand Colleen, but root for her. He also does an excellent job of capturing the times of 40 years ago—Colleen can barely afford cigarettes at 40 cents a pack and spends hours making phone calls on a pay phone and digging for records; current readers will have to remind themselves not to think “Why doesn’t she just Google that?”
Even with an ending some might find abrupt, Tomlinson’s confidence in his characters will have readers ready for his follow-up.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-60809-341-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Oceanview
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
An undisciplined but powerfully lacerating story, by an author who knows every block of the neighborhood and every hair on...
After five adventures for Boston shamus Patrick Kenzie and his off-again lover Angela Gennaro (Prayers for Rain, 1999, etc.), Lehane tries his hand at a crossover novel that’s as dark as any of Patrick’s cases.
Even the 1975 prologue is bleak. Sean Devine and Jimmy Marcus are playing, or fighting, outside Sean’s parents’ house in the Point neighborhood of East Buckingham when a car pulls up, one of the two men inside flashes a badge, and Sean and Jimmy’s friend Dave Boyle gets bundled inside, allegedly to be driven home to his mother for a scolding but actually to get kidnapped. Though Dave escapes after a few days, he never really outlives his ordeal, and 25 years later it’s Jimmy’s turn to join him in hell when his daughter Katie is shot and beaten to death in the wilds of Pen Park, and State Trooper Sean, just returned from suspension, gets assigned to the case. Sean knows that both Dave and Jimmy have been in more than their share of trouble in the past. And he’s got an especially close eye on Jimmy, whose marriage brought him close to the aptly named Savage family and who’s done hard time for robbery. It would be just like Jimmy, Sean knows, to ignore his friend’s official efforts and go after the killer himself. But Sean would be a lot more worried if he knew what Dave’s wife Celeste knows: that hours after catching sight of Katie in the last bar she visited on the night of her death, Dave staggered home covered with somebody else’s blood. Burrowing deep into his three sorry heroes and the hundred ties that bind them unbearably close, Lehane weaves such a spellbinding tale that it’s easy to overlook the ramshackle mystery behind it all.
An undisciplined but powerfully lacerating story, by an author who knows every block of the neighborhood and every hair on his characters’ heads.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2001
ISBN: 0-688-16316-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
This ran in the S.E.P. and resulted in more demands for the story in book form than ever recorded. Well, here it is and it is a honey. Imagine ten people, not knowing each other, not knowing why they were invited on a certain island house-party, not knowing their hosts. Then imagine them dead, one by one, until none remained alive, nor any clue to the murderer. Grand suspense, a unique trick, expertly handled.
Pub Date: Feb. 21, 1939
ISBN: 0062073478
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1939
SEEN & HEARD
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