A mystery in which melodrama reigns, with an admirably tenacious protagonist.
In Cohen’s debut thriller, a lawyer returns to his Washington hometown in the 1970s only to discover a swarm of illicit endeavors may be linked to his family.
Nathan Hirsch is a low-ranking but zealous attorney at a Washington, D.C., firm. Though he generally follows his boss’s script in the courtroom, Nathan takes an opportunity to branch out on his own. This unfortunately entails violating one of the firm’s policies and results in his termination. He retreats to Bethell, Washington, where his depressed mother rarely goes outside, having never recovered from the deaths of her older son, Ritchie, in Vietnam, and her husband, Leon, from a heart attack. Staying in Auntie Riva’s basement, Nathan has a chance to practice law again thanks to “Uncle” Harry King, a family friend and his parents’ lawyer. Nathan isn’t yet licensed in Washington state, but a judge allows him to act as public defender under Harry’s supervision. The same judge later pressures Nathan into representing Wally Richmond, a man arrested for burglary and the murder of “Uncle” Si Galitzer, another Hirsch family friend. Meanwhile, Harry, executor of Si’s will, enlists Nathan as his attorney. Harry anticipates that Si’s brother, Frank, will be in an uproar over a piece of the will, but Nathan wasn’t expecting the peculiarities surrounding Si. Digging deeper exposes a string of shady deeds and businesses as well as the possibility that Harry’s somehow involved. Cohen slowly sets the hook for readers. Nathan’s inevitable downfall in D.C., for one, isn’t a mere preamble but a meticulously drawn-out event. Characters unhurriedly reveal rich back stories, from Harry to Nathan’s D.C. boss, Lynn Reilly. The novel is unquestionably a murder mystery, and there are several suspicious characters. The most riveting is Ritchie. Nathan blames himself for events that drove his brother out of the family. This also ties to Katie, Ritchie’s girlfriend, currently in Bethell and seemingly harboring ill will toward Harry. Nathan’s lack of confidence often dulls the narrative. He sees himself as Reilly’s or Harry’s “puppet” and a lesser man than Ritchie. His keen observations, however, produce effervescent details: in Auntie Riva’s parlor, “the walls do not shake with the past chatter or the laughter that would make a place feel lived in, sounds you might expect to seep into the walls over generations and echo back across time.” The story has merit as a legal thriller; though few scenes take place inside a courtroom, Nathan successfully employs legal maneuvering (e.g., at a bank) to retrieve information. But the genuine focus is on Nathan as a young man overcoming never-ending hurdles. Watching him fight to earn respect within his family and as a lawyer is exhilarating, even before considering all the criminal goings-on.
A mystery in which melodrama reigns, with an admirably tenacious protagonist.Pub Date: Nov. 27, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5328-7925-8
Page Count: 306
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A presold prefab blockbuster, what with King's Carrie hitting the moviehouses, Salem's Lot being lensed, The Shining itself sold to Warner Bros. and tapped as a Literary Guild full selection, NAL paperback, etc. (enough activity to demand an afterlife to consummate it all).
The setting is The Overlook, a palatial resort on a Colorado mountain top, snowbound and closed down for the long, long winter. Jack Torrance, a booze-fighting English teacher with a history of violence, is hired as caretaker and, hoping to finish a five-act tragedy he's writing, brings his wife Wendy and small son Danny to the howling loneliness of the half-alive and mad palazzo. The Overlook has a gruesome past, scenes from which start popping into the present in various suites and the ballroom. At first only Danny, gifted with second sight (he's a "shiner"), can see them; then the whole family is being zapped by satanic forces. The reader needs no supersight to glimpse where the story's going as King's formula builds to a hotel reeling with horrors during Poesque New Year's Eve revelry and confetti outta nowhere....
Back-prickling indeed despite the reader's unwillingness at being mercilessly manipulated.
Pub Date: Jan. 28, 1976
ISBN: 0385121679
Page Count: 453
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1976
PERSPECTIVES
Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead’s earlier work, but a whole lot of fun to read.
Another surprise from an author who never writes the same novel twice.
Though Whitehead has earned considerable critical acclaim for his earlier work—in particular his debut (The Intuitionist, 1999) and its successor (John Henry Days, 2001)—he’ll likely reach a wider readership with his warmest novel to date. Funniest as well, though there have been flashes of humor throughout his writing. The author blurs the line between fiction and memoir as he recounts the coming-of-age summer of 15-year-old Benji Cooper in the family’s summer retreat of New York’s Sag Harbor. “According to the world, we were the definition of paradox: black boys with beach houses,” writes Whitehead. Caucasians are only an occasional curiosity within this idyll, and parents are mostly absent as well. Each chapter is pretty much a self-contained entity, corresponding to a rite of passage: getting the first job, negotiating the mysteries of the opposite sex. There’s an accident with a BB gun and plenty of episodes of convincing someone older to buy beer, but not much really happens during this particular summer. Yet by the end of it, Benji is well on his way to becoming Ben, and he realizes that he is a different person than when the summer started. He also realizes that this time in his life will eventually live only in memory. There might be some distinctions between Benji and Whitehead, though the novelist also spent his youthful summers in Sag Harbor and was the same age as Benji in 1985, when the novel is set. Yet the first-person narrator has the novelist’s eye for detail, craft of character development and analytical instincts for sharp social commentary.
Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead’s earlier work, but a whole lot of fun to read.Pub Date: April 28, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-385-52765-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2009
BOOK TO SCREEN
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