As always, Hall, though no very subtle parodist of the cozy whodunit, provides a smart pace and some gossamer fun. But the...
Fortified by his two-volume sojourn among the Puzzle Lady and her neighbors in Bakerhaven, Connecticut (Last Puzzle and Testament, 2000, etc.), Hall plucks personal-injury shamus Stanley Hastings from Gotham’s mean streets, where his clients are forever slipping and falling, and packs him off on vacation in bucolic New Hampshire, where the leading activities are hiking, dining, swimming, and murder. No sooner has Stanley caught attractive Christine Cobb, first glimpsed hiking in Champney Falls with her boyfriend Lars Heinrick, kissing Dartmouth busboy Randy Winthrop outside Blue Frog Pond, Randy’s parents’ B&B (though perhaps, as Stanley’s wife Alice insists, it’s really an inn), than she’s fatally poisoned at dinner in front of half a dozen gossipy witnesses who didn’t see a thing. After subjecting Stanley to interminable pages of cross-examination about what he saw in the dining room and how many times he and Alice got up from their table, plodding Chief Pinehurst arrests Florence Baker, whose marriage had fallen victim to one of Christine’s earlier flirtations. But Stanley, noting the isolated setting, the genteel suspects, the incompetent cop, and the universal obsession with recipes (three of which are faithfully reprinted), accurately predicts that Max, the Blue Frog’s resident cat, will solve the case.
As always, Hall, though no very subtle parodist of the cozy whodunit, provides a smart pace and some gossamer fun. But the one-dimensional suspects and labored, inconsequential detection make Stanley’s earlier adventures (Suspense, 1998, etc.) look downright substantial by comparison.Pub Date: July 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7867-0874-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2001
A grim and unbearably tense debut chiller with an unexpected and utterly fitting finale.
A lonely British schoolteacher falls for an American man incarcerated for the murder of a young woman. What could possibly go wrong?
Samantha, 31, is still reeling from a bad breakup when she discovers Framing the Truth: The Murder of Holly Michaels, an 18-year-old true-crime documentary about the killing of a young girl by then-18-year-old Dennis Danson, aka the suspected Red River Killer, who’s still on death row in Florida’s Altoona Prison. Sam writes to Dennis, and soon they’re declaring their love for each other. Sam flies to the U.S. to meet him, and although they’re separated by plexiglass, she knows that she’s found the love of her life. The chirpy Carrie, who co-produced and directed the first documentary, is Sam’s guide while she’s there, and Sam accompanies her while they film a new series about Dennis, A Boy from Red River. Sam and Dennis quickly marry when new evidence comes to light and Dennis is exonerated and released. Amid a whirlwind of talk shows, celebrity attention, and the new series premiere, married life isn’t quite what Sam had hoped for: intimacy is nonexistent, the already self-loathing Sam feels unloved and unwanted, and the appearance of Dennis’ clingy childhood friend Lindsay Durst sends Sam into a jealous fit. After Dennis’ father dies, they move into Dennis’ childhood home, and Sam begins to suspect he may be hiding something. After all, what actually happened to all those other missing girls? Refreshingly, Lloyd seems absolutely unconcerned with whether or not her characters are likable, and although a few British sayings ("round," “in hospital”) make their way into the dialogue of the American characters, her research into the aftereffects of long incarceration is obvious, and her portrait of an emotionally damaged woman feels spot-on.
A grim and unbearably tense debut chiller with an unexpected and utterly fitting finale.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-335-95240-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
Ace symbologist Robert Langdon returns, and the world trembles. Perfect escapist reading for fans.
Brown’s (The Lost Symbol, 2009, etc.) latest, in which a very bad guy is convinced that there are entirely too many people roaming the surface of the planet, and, because he’s a fan of Dante and the Plague both, he’s set to unleash inferno upon the world.
Naturally enough, this being a Brown novel, someone is in possession of a piece of occult knowledge that will save the day—or not. The novel is populated with the usual elements in the form of secret, conspiratorial organizations and villains on the way to being supervillains, and readers of a literary bent may find the writing tortured: “This morning, as he stepped onto the private balcony of his yacht’s stateroom, the provost looked across the churning sea and tried to fend off the disquiet that had settled in his gut.” To his credit, Brown’s yarn is somewhat more tightly constructed than his earlier Langdon vehicles, though its best parts are either homages or borrowings; the punky chick assassin who threatens Langdon, for instance, seems to have wandered in from a Stieg Larsson set, while the car-chase-and-explosions stuff, to say nothing of Langdon’s amnesiac wanderings around the world, would seem to be a nod to Robert Ludlum. (Being chased by a drone is a nice touch, though.) If you want more of the great medieval poet Dante woven into a taut thriller, see Matthew Pearl’s The Dante Club.
Ace symbologist Robert Langdon returns, and the world trembles. Perfect escapist reading for fans.Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-385-53785-8
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 22, 2013
BOOK TO SCREEN
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