A captivatingly exotic earlier novel (written in 1988) by the Martiniquean author of the Prix Goncourtwinning Texaco (1993). As in that later book, Chamoiseau treats, with both rich humor and controlled fury, the imposition of French language and law on its island colony's basically Creole culture. Here, his vehicle is a highly unconventional detective story. A legendary storyteller in the racially mixed city of Fort-de-France, the eponymous ``Solibo Magnificent,'' is discovered dead, of unknown causes, though the local police suspect poisoning (even as many testify that ``Solibo hadn't swallowed a thing, and no one had come near him''). Police Sergeant Philemon Bouffasse (a notorious adulterer) and his superior, by-the-book Chief Inspector Evariste Pilon, detain and interrogate 14 witnesses (one of whom is ``word-scratcher'' Patrick Chamoiseau), occasioning a colorful composite picture of the little world in which Solibo was revered. There gradually emerges an image of the great storyteller as a visionary who, like Christ in the wilderness, wandered alone in the forest (where ``he spoke to the stones and the bark''), and thereafter gained fame for such exploits as calming a ``mad pig'' resisting slaughter and saving the life of a woman street-vendor by charming a menacing ``long one'' (snake). The novel is further fleshed out by Chamoiseau's droll parodies of the classic detective story (e.g., ``that appalling mystery of the old mulatto woman killed in a sealed hutch''), and by his moving attribution of his own ability to ``find sense in writing'' from the example of the beloved Solibo. Though the mystery of the latter's death is never literally ``solved,'' it's made stunningly clear that it is the art of oral storytelling that has been ``killed'' by its contact with a world unable to hear and feel its revivifying rhythms. A wonderful novel well served by a helpful Glossary and Afterword, as well as by a superlative translation that brings its exotic world exhilaratingly close to our own.
Pub Date: March 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-679-43236-1
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1998
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
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. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
A smoothly written contemporary caper paired with a murder mystery and a little meet-the-Jetsons futurism. No one does...
Written under her real name and her pseudonym, two books in one from megaselling Roberts/Robb.
Book one: Laine Tavish, gorgeous redhead and owner of a small-town antique store, isn’t about to tell the cops that she knew the old man who was hit by a car right outside her shop. Just before he took his dying breath, she recognized Willy Young, partner in crime to Big Jack O’Hara, her father. Their biggest heist: millions of dollars in hot diamonds. Her father went to prison, but not Willy, whose last words were “left it for you.” What did he leave—and where? Enter Max Gannon, insurance investigator and all-around stud, with thick, wavy, run-your-fingers-through-it hair, tawny eyes that remind Laine of a tiger, and a delicious Georgia drawl. He beds Laine pronto, and they solve the case. But some of the diamonds are still missing. . . . Book two: it’s 50 years later, and New York traffic is slower than ever: just try getting a helicab on a rainy day. But Samantha Gannon, author of a bestseller called Hot Rocks based on her grandparents’ experiences in the long-ago case, eventually makes it home from the airport to find her house-sitter Andrea dead, throat cut. Another investigation begins, spearheaded by Eve Dallas, a tough-talking but very appealing New York cop married to Roarke, a rich, eccentric genius who just barely manages to stay on the right side of the law. Is the murderer after the rest of the diamonds? And is he or she related to the master thief who betrayed Samantha’s great-grandfather? There are more burning questions, and Eve wants answers—but, first, get Central on the telelink and program the Autochef for pastrami on rye.
A smoothly written contemporary caper paired with a murder mystery and a little meet-the-Jetsons futurism. No one does Suspense Lite better than Nora.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-399-15106-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2003
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