Conspiracy, misdirection, and paranoia intertwine deliriously in this Pynchonesque roman noirwhich won 1994's Latin American Dashiell Hammett Awardby the popular Mexican author of such distinctive mystery novels as The Shadow of the Shadow (1991) and Four Hands (1994). Like Dickens, Taibo sets vividly described characters in manic motion, challenging readers to decipher what they're up to and how their separate pursuits are interconnected. To wit: Mexican mystery writer JosÇ Daniel Fierro (from Life Itself, 1994), an aficionado of televised US Women's basketball, interrupts the novel he isn't writing to investigate an outrage perpetrated upon the young athlete he has adored from afar; diminutive crime reporter Antonio Amador (a real historical figure) survives by his wits and his cojones in 1920s Barcelona, during labor unrest and a looming general strikeand keeps bumping heads with notorious anarchist Angel del Hierro (who may be the grandfather of author Fierro, who is reimagining Amador's adventures); and Jerry Milligan, a CIA operative who survived the fall of Saigon, finds himself summoned to Mexico City by an old compatriot whose criminal demands have something to do with the story Fierro is, alternately, living and reshaping. Behind it (and them) all lurks the protean figure of Leonardo da Vinci, whose documented conception of the bicycle400 years before its invention''had demonstrated the impossibility of the realm of the impossible'' (a typically Taibian formulation), ``and had thereby thrown open the door to hope.'' The novel's jagged structure, featuring rapid segues among its several narrative blocs, creates considerable early confusion, and readers may grow weary. But its characters are sharply imagined, the comic grotesquerie grows on you, the suspense keeps building, and the payoff is terrific. Dazzling, if dense, entertainment: a cockeyed magical-realist paean to the all-too-human power of the imagination in action, and under duress, then as now.
Pub Date: Sept. 7, 1995
ISBN: 0-89296-589-4
Page Count: 464
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1995
Categories: GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | MYSTERY & DETECTIVE
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Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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Murder and mayhem plague a film set on a secluded island off the coast of Delaware in Little’s (Dear Daughter, 2015, etc.) sophomore thriller.
When film editor Marissa Dahl takes a job on a new film directed by the talented but temperamental Tony Rees, she’s not given a script and must sign a mile-long nondisclosure agreement. It’s not ideal, but she needs the work. Escorted by an attractive ex–Navy SEAL named Isaiah, Marissa arrives on Kickout Island to find a bustling set, headquartered at a beautiful hotel, that is cloaked in secrecy and beset with dysfunction. Once Marissa gets down to work, she realizes that picking up the slack from the previous editor, who was fired for unknown reasons, won’t be smooth sailing and that the movie is based on the real-life unsolved murder of aspiring actress Caitlyn Kelly 25 years ago on that very island. Most folks assume that an eccentric ferry captain named Billy Lyle, a friend of Caitlyn’s, was the killer, but there was never enough evidence to convict. A few people, however, think he may be innocent. Marissa sets out to discover what really happened to Caitlyn with the help of Isaiah and two intrepid, tech-savvy 13-year-olds—Grace Portillo and Suzy Koh, whose parents work for the hotel. What she finds is a dead body and a whole lot of trouble. Readers fascinated with the behind-the-scenes machinations of a movie set will be enthralled, plus there’s a frisson of romantic tension between Isaiah and Marissa, and the island setting lends some spooky atmosphere. Snippets from Grace and Suzy’s true-crime podcast, Dead Ringer, are also sprinkled throughout. Though a killer on the loose adds a fair bit of urgency in the second half, the main focus is on Little’s singular narrator. Marissa relates to the world primarily through film and considers herself anything but typical: “It’s possible I’ve spent so much time watching movies that the language of film has infiltrated some primal, necessary part of my brain. I catch myself processing my own emotions in scenes, in shots, in dialogue.”
A quirky and distinctive heroine headlines this fun and fast-paced thriller loaded with cinematic flourishes.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-670-01639-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
Categories: GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | MYSTERY & DETECTIVE
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