Implausibly melodramatic portrait of a killer whose actions evoke horror rather than sympathy.
Tyree (Just Say No!, 2001, etc.), whose grim tales of life in the ’hood usually offer moments of grace or wisdom, tells a horrifying and essentially nasty story of a woman who murders those who get in her way.
The New Orleans–set story reflects a depressing racism: all whites, however well intentioned or innocent, are responsible for the plights of blacks, while the ills of victimhood excuse the vilest behavior. The violence begins shortly after aspiring filmmaker Kaiyah videotapes an interview with four Dillard University students who share a house. Ayana, a wannabe rap star, Bridget, daughter of wealthy parents, and goodhearted Yula all cooperate, but the fourth, Leslie Beaudet, refuses to speak. A good and ambitious student, Leslie is tormented by her family problems, her past, and her responsibilities. Her Haitian father, who wanted to be a great chef, is living in a shelter; her sister Laetitia is a teenaged unmarried mother in the projects; and elder brother Pierre, who once stood by while she was sexually abused by a gang of boys, rides round with gangster leader and drug-dealer Beaucoup. When her mother dies of AIDS and Laetitia is upset because her man is seeing waitress Phyllis, something snaps in Leslie. Her father had talked to her about Haitian Vaudou (the true version of voodoo), and Leslie, believing she’s a Vaudoo priestess, uses her powers to eliminate all who thwart her. First is the waitress Phyllis. Then, annoyed by her prying, Leslie arranges for Kaiyah to be killed. Next comes Eugene, Bridget’s Creole boyfriend. Leslie herself knocks off gangster Beaucoup after luring him to a hotel room. The violence is intensified when brother Pierre, fearful of the consequences of Beaucoup’s death, kills his guards. And Leslie, still angry, apparently can be understood only by “facing the lies of America, those painful lies of color.”
Implausibly melodramatic portrait of a killer whose actions evoke horror rather than sympathy.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2002
ISBN: 0-7432-2866-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2002
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally...
Yale’s secret societies hide a supernatural secret in this fantasy/murder mystery/school story.
Most Yale students get admitted through some combination of impressive academics, athletics, extracurriculars, family connections, and donations, or perhaps bribing the right coach. Not Galaxy “Alex” Stern. The protagonist of Bardugo’s (King of Scars, 2019, etc.) first novel for adults, a high school dropout and low-level drug dealer, Alex got in because she can see dead people. A Yale dean who's a member of Lethe, one of the college’s famously mysterious secret societies, offers Alex a free ride if she will use her spook-spotting abilities to help Lethe with its mission: overseeing the other secret societies’ occult rituals. In Bardugo’s universe, the “Ancient Eight” secret societies (Lethe is the eponymous Ninth House) are not just old boys’ breeding grounds for the CIA, CEOs, Supreme Court justices, and so on, as they are in ours; they’re wielders of actual magic. Skull and Bones performs prognostications by borrowing patients from the local hospital, cutting them open, and examining their entrails. St. Elmo’s specializes in weather magic, useful for commodities traders; Aurelian, in unbreakable contracts; Manuscript goes in for glamours, or “illusions and lies,” helpful to politicians and movie stars alike. And all these rituals attract ghosts. It’s Alex’s job to keep the supernatural forces from embarrassing the magical elite by releasing chaos into the community (all while trying desperately to keep her grades up). “Dealing with ghosts was like riding the subway: Do not make eye contact. Do not smile. Do not engage. Otherwise, you never know what might follow you home.” A townie’s murder sets in motion a taut plot full of drug deals, drunken assaults, corruption, and cover-ups. Loyalties stretch and snap. Under it all runs the deep, dark river of ambition and anxiety that at once powers and undermines the Yale experience. Alex may have more reason than most to feel like an imposter, but anyone who’s spent time around the golden children of the Ivy League will likely recognize her self-doubt.
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally dazzling sequels.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-31307-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
King fans won’t be disappointed, though most will likely prefer the scarier likes of The Shining and It.
The master of modern horror returns with a loose-knit parapsychological thriller that touches on territory previously explored in Firestarter and Carrie.
Tim Jamieson is a man emphatically not in a hurry. As King’s (The Outsider, 2018, etc.) latest opens, he’s bargaining with a flight attendant to sell his seat on an overbooked run from Tampa to New York. His pockets full, he sticks out his thumb and winds up in the backwater South Carolina town of DuPray (should we hear echoes of “pray”? Or “depraved”?). Turns out he’s a decorated cop, good at his job and at reading others (“You ought to go see Doc Roper,” he tells a local. “There are pills that will brighten your attitude”). Shift the scene to Minneapolis, where young Luke Ellis, precociously brilliant, has been kidnapped by a crack extraction team, his parents brutally murdered so that it looks as if he did it. Luke is spirited off to Maine—this is King, so it’s got to be Maine—and a secret shadow-government lab where similarly conscripted paranormally blessed kids, psychokinetic and telepathic, are made to endure the Skinnerian pain-and-reward methods of the evil Mrs. Sigsby. How to bring the stories of Tim and Luke together? King has never minded detours into the unlikely, but for this one, disbelief must be extra-willingly suspended. In the end, their forces joined, the two and their redneck allies battle the sophisticated secret agents of The Institute in a bloodbath of flying bullets and beams of mental energy (“You’re in the south now, Annie had told these gunned-up interlopers. She had an idea they were about to find out just how true that was"). It’s not King at his best, but he plays on current themes of conspiracy theory, child abuse, the occult, and Deep State malevolence while getting in digs at the current occupant of the White House, to say nothing of shadowy evil masterminds with lisps.
King fans won’t be disappointed, though most will likely prefer the scarier likes of The Shining and It.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9821-1056-7
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
