An engrossing mystery that delivers a rich character study and a tale of redemption.
A disgraced investigative reporter gets a chance to reclaim his reputation while stuck writing obituaries for the famous.
Oster’s titular character is Wallace “Mack” McRae. Mack used to be an award-winning reporter for the Journal. Then his wife, Helen, began a long, slow decline while battling ALS, and Mack starting drinking to cope, eventually getting fired. Now he writes slimy advance obituaries of celebrities for the sleazy website dead.com, mainly because he gets a health insurance package that keeps pace with Helen’s medical bills. Then one day, Mack’s luck changes. One of his longtime obit subjects is Dieter von Gehlen, a German-born doctor, organic chemist, and perennial Nobel Prize hopeful best known for his contribution to well-known weight-loss drug LytheEZ. Von Gehlen calls, wanting to meet with Mack. Then the chemist is found dead by apparent suicide. This makes no sense to Mack, so he begins to investigate von Gehlen’s death. The writer discovers that the doctor’s laptop and file cabinet are missing. Mack later determines that von Gehlen had doubts about the drug trials for LytheEZ. By using his reporter skills to dig deeper, Mack gets on the radar of the rich and powerful who don’t want LytheEZ’s safeness questioned or his investigation into von Gehlen’s death published. So Mack ends up in danger as well. Oster closed out his long journalism career dabbling as an obit writer, which, he explains in his author’s note, inspired this mystery. The author is familiar with the underbelly of journalism, and that shows in his caustic descriptions of dead.com and its weaselly owner, Anton Teufel. It’s an ugly, new world of information gathering and dispersal. Mack is a sympathetic character, exhibiting a strong work ethic despite the turmoil in his personal life, as he tries to stay on the wagon while Helen is slowly dying. He deftly employs many of the contacts he’s acquired through the years to compile his comeback article. Oster also provides Mack with a plethora of potential overlords behind a dim Russian hit man pursuing him. The result is a layered, fast-paced thriller featuring a captivating protagonist.
An engrossing mystery that delivers a rich character study and a tale of redemption.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 396
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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 vivid, exciting page-turner from one of our most interesting authors of historical fiction.
When a man accused of rape turns up dead, an Early American town seeks justice amid rumors and controversy.
Lawhon’s fifth work of historical fiction is inspired by the true story and diaries of midwife Martha Ballard of Hallowell, Maine, a character she brings to life brilliantly here. As Martha tells her patient in an opening chapter set in 1789, “You need not fear….In all my years attending women in childbirth, I have never lost a mother.” This track record grows in numerous compelling scenes of labor and delivery, particularly one in which Martha has to clean up after the mistakes of a pompous doctor educated at Harvard, one of her nemeses in a town that roils with gossip and disrespect for women’s abilities. Supposedly, the only time a midwife can testify in court is regarding paternity when a woman gives birth out of wedlock—but Martha also takes the witness stand in the rape case against a dead man named Joshua Burgess and his living friend Col. Joseph North, whose role as judge in local court proceedings has made the victim, Rebecca Foster, reluctant to make her complaint public. Further complications are numerous: North has control over the Ballard family's lease on their property; Rebecca is carrying the child of one of her rapists; Martha’s son was seen fighting with Joshua Burgess on the day of his death. Lawhon weaves all this into a richly satisfying drama that moves suspensefully between childbed, courtroom, and the banks of the Kennebec River. The undimmed romance between 40-something Martha and her husband, Ephraim, adds a racy flair to the proceedings. Knowing how rare the quality of their relationship is sharpens the intensity of Martha’s gaze as she watches the romantic lives of her grown children unfold. As she did with Nancy Wake in Code Name Hélène (2020), Lawhon creates a stirring portrait of a real-life heroine and, as in all her books, includes an endnote with detailed background.
A vivid, exciting page-turner from one of our most interesting authors of historical fiction.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780385546874
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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