A fun escapist read with engaging characters and intriguing historical morsels; a solid series addition.
A ghost haunts the woods outside Lemont, Illinois, in this third installment of a mystery series.
Billy Nokoy, a 20-something Native American, knows he is considered a loser, but now he also thinks he must be going crazy. He seems to have the power to cause lightning bolt–style destruction. There is only one person who might be able to help him understand what happened at Mount Forest Island—Cora Tozzi. Grandmotherly Cora was there the day Billy’s mysterious force was released. Meanwhile, Valerie Pawlik, who was permanently blinded in an automobile accident two years ago, also faces a crossroads. She has mastered navigating without her eyesight, but her brother and sister-in-law want her to move out of their home. Divorced, without a job, the mother of an 11-year-old daughter living in California, and just about out of savings, Valerie is stuck in place. According to her psychological counselor, Father McGrath, she needs to make friends, never her strong suit, and to confront her unresolved emotional baggage—her mother abandoned the family when Valerie was 13 and she never saw her again. Father McGrath recommends she seek help from Cora, with whom she had a bitter fight just before her car crash. Everything is in place for Camalliere’s special sauce, a mixture of present-day drama, history, and unexplained phenomena—plus, of course, a ghost, in this case one who is a bit confused but determined to exact revenge. From the 1920s until the early ’40s, Mount Forest Island was home to a golf course and clubhouse used by Al Capone and his friends as well as a farmhouse with mob connections. The structures were torn down decades ago, but left behind, apparently, was some unfinished personal business. Billy’s and Valerie’s quests begin to converge when he becomes the reluctant mystical conduit between past and present. He alone sees the once-abandoned, now nonexistent structures, and only he interacts with the very talkative spirit. The author supplements genealogical research and supernatural meddling with satisfying, well-paced action scenes.
A fun escapist read with engaging characters and intriguing historical morsels; a solid series addition.Pub Date: March 27, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-937484-72-9
Page Count: 359
Publisher: Amika Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
It's hard to read but hard to look away from.
When two women who share a birthday meet, a journalist becomes the subject of her own true-crime mystery.
On their 45th birthdays, Josie Fair and Alix Summer meet at a pub and discover they were born not only on the same day, but in the same hospital. Alix is a successful journalist, and Josie convinces Alix that her story is worth telling: Josie met her husband when she was 13 and he was 40. “I can see that maybe I was being used, that maybe I was even being groomed?” she confesses to Alix. “But that feeling of being powerful, right at the start, when I was still in control. I miss that sometimes. I really do. And what I’d like, more than anything, is to get it back.” From this premise Alix creates a Netflix series, Hi! I’m Your Birthday Twin! which investigates Josie’s life as she reconciles what happened to her as a teen and seeks a new path. With the story unfinished, the narrative unfolds in the present tense, with prose that jingles like song lyrics: “He turns to see if the girl is behind him, and sees her wishy-washy, wavy-wavy, in double vision through the glass windows of the hotel.” Alix is both intrigued and repulsed by Josie, but she initially gives her the benefit of the doubt. After all, Alix’s husband, Nathan, has a drinking problem, and Alix knows what it’s like to be reluctant to leave a bad situation. But Josie seems more interested in being part of Alix’s seemingly glamorous life than she is in fixing her own, and when three people end up dead and Alix’s life is turned upside down, the evidence points to Josie—and turns the TV series into a murder mystery. Transcripts from Alix’s interviews alternate with the narrative, offering increasingly varied perspectives on Josie’s story as told by her neighbors, friends, and family members. With so many versions of events, the ending shatters, leaving readers to decide whose is the truth.
It's hard to read but hard to look away from.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2023
ISBN: 9781982179007
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
A tale that’s hard to believe but easy to swallow in a single gulp.
A bear is hunting prey in Wyoming’s Bighorns. And not just any bear.
It’s bad enough that Clay Hutmacher, who manages the Double Diamond Ranch, has lost his son, Clay Jr., to a vicious attack by a grizzly bear. What’s much worse is that Clay Jr.—who’d been about to pop the question to game warden Joe Pickett’s daughter, Sheridan—is only the first of the victims over an exceptionally broad geographical area. Marshal Marvin Bertignolli is clawed and bitten to death over in Hanna. Sgt. Ryan Winner is found bleeding out north of Rawlins. Former Twelve Sleep County prosecutor Dulcie Schalk, one of two survivors of an ambush, doesn’t survive her final encounter. The four experts chosen to kill the grizzly rope Joe into their expedition, but since their quarry keeps turning up far from the last sighting, the most meaningful confrontation the Predator Attack Team has is with a pair of Mama Bears, animal rights activists who demand due process for Tisiphone, as they’ve dubbed the presumed killer. Box, who’s far too canny to leave Tisiphone alone on center stage, follows Joe’s old antagonist Dallas Cates as the ex–rodeo star is released from prison and embarks on his revenge tour, which takes him to Lee Ogburn-Russell, an inventor whose life Dallas saved, and Axel Soledad, a correspondent who shares so many enemies with Dallas that he suggests they go after them together. Franchise fans will appreciate new details about Joe’s complicated family, the obligatory high-country landscapes, and yet another corrupt law enforcer.
A tale that’s hard to believe but easy to swallow in a single gulp.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9780593331347
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
© Copyright 2024 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.
bookshelf
