Although not quite a fast-paced page-turner, this crime story remains an intriguing and satisfying offering by a promising...
A crack Los Angeles Police Department detective and an escaped murder suspect match wits in a novel featuring two obsessed loners.
Melvin Spilsbury is a quirky, insecure, socially awkward milquetoast. When Cheryl Beaumont, his boss’s wife, turns to him for personal advice about her marriage, he quickly enters into a daunting relationship that will result in a grisly murder. Now meet Lt. John Elias, a decorated, play-by-the-rules cop who has devoted his career to getting justice for those who have suffered at the hands of the “filthy scum” who prey upon the innocent. He, too, leads a socially isolated life, so dogged in his commitment to his cases that it cost him a relationship with the only woman he has ever loved. When Elias arrests Spilsbury for the murder of Arthur Beaumont and then the suspect escapes from custody, the cat-and-mouse chase begins. Each protagonist, for his own reason, is out for revenge. Anez (The Blue Mirror, 2016, etc.) begins the tale by having some fun with readers. The novel opens with an “Editor’s Note” stating that this presentation of “one of the most controversial murder cases in Los Angeles history” is culled from the purported diaries of John Elias and Melvin Spilsbury, the verbatim entries of which the editors will present in chronological order. It is a clever hook that snares the reader into this faux setup. The entire narrative is told through what are essentially two first-person fictional memoirs, with Spilsbury receiving by far the lion’s share of the text. The author stumbles a bit in two aspects of the basic premise—he never says how the “diaries” were located, and he doesn’t provide substantive grounds for the initial question he poses to readers about Spilsbury: “Are these writings an accurate depiction of what actually happened or the delusional ravings of a madman?” But Anez excels in fleshing out two three-dimensional characters who seem to have more in common than either would admit. How the murder and its consequences change each of them as they race to the finish constitutes the real meat of the tale.
Although not quite a fast-paced page-turner, this crime story remains an intriguing and satisfying offering by a promising author.Pub Date: April 11, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5305-6296-1
Page Count: 344
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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
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