A solid historical detective story with a tenacious detective, unanticipated twists and an ample supply of suspects.
A search for a wayward daughter in 1927 Paris leads to an investigation into a series of murders in Mears’ (Chasing Dietrich, 2011) latest mystery featuring Pinkerton detective Michael Temple.
Temple has an assignment in Paris that seems like a walk in the park: deliver a father’s letter and bring Anne Johnson home to Ohio. The detective has trouble finding her, but he meets plenty of other people along the way. The novel has a slow, deliberate build, with Temple leisurely hunting in Parisian cafes and having a romance in Luxembourg with Anne’s friend and British doppelganger, Jane. But what appears to be a tour of Europe escalates into a powerhouse whodunit on a grand scale. Temple is framed for murder, roughed up and tossed in jail repeatedly; as soon as he seems cleared of one crime, another body is found. Temple searches for the truth to clear his name in a time of communists, cons and killers. The story’s historical backdrop is richly textured: Temple is a veteran who’d only previously been to Paris during the war; there’s a strong Russian communist presence in the city; and Ernest Hemingway’s missing papers and a letter by Lenin become central to the plot. (The detective even questions Hemingway’s ex-wife, Hadley, who has to explain a Freud reference to him.) The fine-tuned dialogue is a particular highlight, from a rotund writer’s hilarious speech, interspersed with wheezing and throat clearing, to Temple’s comment that he returned home after a night of drinking “early by Paris standards, and drunk by anyone’s standards.” But the book’s most engaging quality is Temple’s adamant refusal to quit; when the police believe they’ve found the solution, all the detective sees are loose ends—which he attacks fervently. In scenes that bookend the novel, an 89-year-old Temple travels to Paris, still wanting answers to questions that are more than half a century old.
A solid historical detective story with a tenacious detective, unanticipated twists and an ample supply of suspects.Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2012
ISBN: 978-1479290789
Page Count: 350
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
© 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.
