A murder case becomes the springboard for a striking tale of a man coming to terms with his chaotic past.
A Brooklyn detective works a vicious homicide while striving to bring his ruptured family together in this debut police procedural.
The latest case for Padraig “Paddy” Joseph Durr, senior first-grade detective at the 83rd Precinct, seems fairly open-and-shut. Two men were with the victim when he was shot by an unknown assailant, who managed to escape but dropped his gun. The witnesses, however, aren’t reliable—one’s a convicted car thief—and the victim isn’t so easy to identify, with a handful of IDs listing varying names on his person. Paddy’s personal life is no less complicated, starting with his estranged wife, Mairead, serving him divorce papers. His infidelity as well as his often strenuous job played a part in the couple’s strained relationship and, by extension, in their children either ignoring or outright despising their father. Flashbacks detail Paddy’s arduous road in his nearly 30 years as a cop. The product of abusive parents, Paddy is the only one of four children who makes it out of the home alive, losing his brothers to gunfire and heroin overdoses. As a cop, he suffers from PTSD following job-related shootings, one that leads to the possibility of a murder indictment. If Paddy can overcome such ordeals, professional and domestic, he’ll hopefully be able to track down the shooter. Though the present-day mystery is standard fare, it’s truly a catalyst for delving into Paddy’s background and all that’s shaped him, with the book excelling as a character study. The detective opens the story by beating, biting, and even spitting on another cop with little provocation (though the motivation is revealed in due course). Nevertheless, Paddy’s history generates a good deal of sympathy. The New York mayor, for one, targets him, turning on Paddy when his justified shooting of a career criminal attracts adverse media coverage that results in public riots. In a similar vein, the affair is more indicative of Paddy’s self-destruction than self-indulgence. O’Keefe’s detective is traditionally gruff but often gleefully so; when asked why he pled the Fifth 29 times in front of a grand jury, he bluntly states that there wasn’t a 30th question.
A murder case becomes the springboard for a striking tale of a man coming to terms with his chaotic past.Pub Date: July 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4834-5326-2
Page Count: 412
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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