A perfectly serviceable CSI-style forensic thriller, but its significance falls short of its title.
In his debut novel, Platt (Holy Economics, 2011) obliquely questions the Rev. Martin Luther King’s vision of equality with a story about an African-American baby’s death.
As the retired chief medical examiner of Summit County, Ohio, and a specialist in pediatric pathology, Platt is well-placed to spin a realistic medical case into a gripping courtroom drama. His novel, set in 2002, opens with two emergency medical technicians racing to a housing-project apartment to save a 6-week-old African-American boy named Elizer Marshall. The baby, who shows apparent signs of non-accidental, blunt head trauma, is dead by morning. Detectives decide they will need to take blood and urine samples from the boy’s parents—Will, an African-American man; and Eva, a Hispanic woman—to assess the likelihood of fetal alcohol syndrome and other abuse. The author’s comprehensive knowledge of anatomy, pathology and criminal law is evident in his detailed descriptions of a pediatric intensive care ward, a brain examination during autopsy, jury selection and cross-examination. For example, although most of the novel is told from a limited third-person perspective, Platt follows the jurors into seclusion to hear their deliberations. One key question finally emerges: Did the baby’s injuries result from forceful resuscitation, or are they proof of homicide? A clever twist ending will overturn readers’ ideas about who’s to blame for Elizer’s death. Parts of the book resemble a screenplay, particularly Chapter XXI, which is divided into “Scenes” labeled A through F. Indeed, the novel began life as a play, and this is reflected in its preference for dialogue over expository prose. However, despite the title, the book fails to contribute to the discourse about racial justice in America. Instead, it arbitrarily divides its characters into binary pairs, including one white and one black EMT (unsubtly named Tom Black), and one white and one black police detective. Also, although Will’s father presents abhorrent views—“Whitey is second class compared to us”—the book presents no voices of rebuttal. Will’s poetic cry for justice (“My God, My God. / Do Not Forsake Me. / For I Too Have a Dream / Like That of Martin Luther King, Jr.”) accounts for the title, but feels overblown.
A perfectly serviceable CSI-style forensic thriller, but its significance falls short of its title.Pub Date: March 17, 2012
ISBN: 978-0979782510
Page Count: 318
Publisher: Monte Verde Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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