A colorful but overly complex origin story of thrills, kills, and strong wills.
A luxurious and lethal spa provides the setting for this debut thriller.
Most people wouldn’t accept an anonymous gift of a weeklong stay at an exclusive resort. But when former college professor and divorcée Charlotte “Charley” Anderson receives a calligraphed invitation to the famous Rancho Verde Spa in Santa Fe, she simply asks, “What time is check-in?” The hard-drinking New Yorker identifies herself as “new money.” A horrific accident 10 years ago scarred her physically as well as emotionally, but it also provided her with a multimillion-dollar settlement. However, her college fired her when it was revealed that she’d been having an affair with 19-year-old student Mark Bailey Elliot III. At the resort, Charley discovers that Mark’s late mother, Margaret, used to be a frequent visitor. She also finds out that Margaret and numerous other guests apparently became hooked on pills before committing suicide. Mark, who’s now married and living in Dallas, hasn’t seen Charley in a decade, but he still considers her the smartest woman he ever knew. He proves to be the financier of her spa stay, and he asks her to find out inside information about the place, which he thinks is linked to his mother’s death. PI Nash Pope, who speaks Spanish and some Navajo, also helps. Divorced Charley’s heart beats faster at the thought of being with Mark again, but a kidnapping alters those plans. The author gets points for delivering a flawed, feisty protagonist in this series starter: “Charley carried her scars like some people carry a .45—hidden, only brought out when needed.” Readers will also find the multicultural cast of characters to be welcome, and Long’s descriptions are vivid, detailing such things as a New Mexican landscape (“The soft colors of the sage and sand were backlit by the brightness of the red rock formations and the incredible blue of the sky”) and a pair of designer stilettos. The plot, however, is distractingly convoluted; even Charley marvels at everything she’s gone through.
A colorful but overly complex origin story of thrills, kills, and strong wills.Pub Date: June 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9991810-8-9
Page Count: 218
Publisher: Yellow City Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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