A rousing set of tales of a workaday PI.
Keenan’s (The Georgellen Club, 2017) short story collection details the misadventures of a Texan private investigator.
August Spivey isn’t like typical literary PIs, who are mostly embroiled in murder mysteries. Instead, he primarily serves people with papers, such as federal subpoenas or temporary restraining orders. However, these tasks can lead to shocking, sometimes-dangerous encounters, including confrontations with a violent tennis player (“When Nice Don’t Work”) and a particularly aggressive pit bull (“It’s What I Do”). The stories in this book portray August throughout his career, although the first-person narratives never specify the exact years in which they take place. They range from the day that he decided to move from bartending to PI work (“Life I Chose”) to his later years, when he acknowledges he can’t keep up with new technology. August also sometimes takes jobs outside process-serving, such as searching for construction siding that someone pilfered from his former Catholic school in “The Same Damn Dream” and, in a few stories, watching bartenders who may be stealing from their employers. The tales work well as stand-alones, although there are a few recurring characters, such as August’s wife, Sandy; his attorney brother, Jack; and fellow PI Chuckie Mays, as well as occasional references to other tales. August’s life is surprisingly riveting, with a fair amount of action, as multiple characters threaten him with a beating or a bullet. Most tales feature animated similes and metaphors (“sweating like a derby winner”; “a boxing match going on in my head”). Even the stories of his life outside work are engaging, as when he becomes deathly ill in “Another Close Call” or gets into a serious mishap while driving in the closing “And I Call Myself a Private Eye.” At other points, readers learn that August is a recovering alcoholic who suffers bouts of insomnia, but “A Day in the Life of August Spivey” takes an oddly mundane turn, detailing his meticulous daily routine of exercise and writing reports.
A rousing set of tales of a workaday PI.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-73266-422-7
Page Count: 235
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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
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