This story is the literary equivalent of standing on the street beneath a skyscraper watching a disturbed soul teeter on a...
A detailed look inside the mind of a remorseless serial killer penned by a New Zealand-based writer who specializes in gore and the gruesome side of crime.
Joe, whose name is repeated endlessly by the characters in this book, is a janitor at the Christchurch, New Zealand, police station, where he scrubs urinals, mops floors and vacuums while eavesdropping on the department’s investigation into a serial murderer that preys on women. Joe’s interest in the killings is not academic or even a matter of morbid curiosity; he is the very busy and exceedingly brutal perpetrator of these homicides. But he’s not watching the police to see how close they’re getting at the moment; instead his curiosity is based on the murder of a woman who is not his own victim. Incensed that a copycat is also on the loose, Joe decides that the extra murder is the perfect cover for him. His plan is simple: find out who did it and pin all of the homicides on the other killer. Since Joe has access to police records and meetings, he sets out to find out who, if anyone, the cops are looking at as a suspect, but there are complications along the way, including Sally, another janitor who likes him too much for his own good. Cleave’s universe is populated with a palpable brutality. The glimpses of insight he offers into his killers’ thoughts are simultaneously disturbing and fascinating in a sick sort of way. As a writer, he knows how to grab the reader’s attention, but even fans of darker thrillers will find the level of violence in this book disturbing. Cleave has no boundaries he won’t cross and no compunctions about writing solely sacrificial characters into his storyline. Except for the constant repetition of Joe’s name, the book is well-narrated and interesting, even though it sloshes around in buckets of blood with disturbing cruelty.
This story is the literary equivalent of standing on the street beneath a skyscraper watching a disturbed soul teeter on a ledge, threatening to jump.Pub Date: Dec. 11, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-7779-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
With its flat, staccato tone and mournful mood, it’s almost as if the book itself were suffering from depression.
A young Philadelphia policewoman searches for her addicted sister on the streets.
The title of Moore’s (The Unseen World, 2016, etc.) fourth novel refers to “a long bright river of departed souls,” the souls of people dead from opioid overdoses in the Philadelphia neighborhood of Kensington. The book opens with a long paragraph that's just a list of names, most of whom don’t have a role in the plot, but the last two entries are key: “Our mother. Our father.” As the novel opens, narrator Mickey Fitzpatrick—a bright but emotionally damaged single mom—is responding with her partner to a call. A dead girl has turned up in an abandoned train yard frequented by junkies. Mickey is terrified that it will be her estranged sister, Kacey, whom she hasn’t seen in a while. The two were raised by their grandmother, a cold, bitter woman who never recovered from the overdose death of the girls' mother. Mickey herself is awkward and tense in all social situations; when she talks about her childhood she mentions watching the other kids from the window, trying to memorize their mannerisms so she could “steal them and use them [her]self.” She is close with no one except her 4-year-old son, Thomas, whom she barely sees because she works so much, leaving him with an unenthusiastic babysitter. Opioid abuse per se is not the focus of the action—the book centers on the search for Kacey. Obsessed with the possibility that her sister will end up dead before she can find her, Mickey breaches protocol and makes a series of impulsive decisions that get her in trouble. The pace is frustratingly slow for most of the book, then picks up with a flurry of revelations and developments toward the end, bringing characters onstage we don’t have enough time to get to know. The narrator of this atmospheric crime novel has every reason to be difficult and guarded, but the reader may find her no easier to bond with than the other characters do.
With its flat, staccato tone and mournful mood, it’s almost as if the book itself were suffering from depression.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-54067-0
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
Detail-packed, uninhibitedly discursive, with dollops of heavy-handed humor, and set forth in the author’s usual...
Stephenson’s prodigious new yarn (after The Diamond Age, 1995, etc.) whirls from WWII cryptography and top-secret bullion shipments to a present-day quest by computer whizzes to build a data haven amid corporate shark-infested waters, by way of multiple present-tense narratives overlaid with creeping paranoia.
In 1942, phenomenally talented cryptanalyst Lawrence Waterhouse is plucked from the ruins of Pearl Harbor and posted to Bletchley Park, England, center of Allied code-breaking operations. Problem: having broken the highest German and Japanese codes, how can the Allies use the information without revealing by their actions that the codes have been broken? Enter US Marine Raider Bobby Shaftoe, specialist in cleanup details, statistical adjustments, and dirty jobs. In the present, meanwhile, Waterhouse’s grandson, the computer-encryption whiz Randy, tries to set up a data haven in Southeast Asia, one secure from corporate rivals, nosy governments, and inquisitive intelligence services. He teams up with Shaftoe’s stunning granddaughter, Amy, while pondering mysterious, e-mails from root@eruditorum.org, who’s developed a weird but effective encoding algorithm. Everything, of course, eventually links together. During WWII, Waterhouse and Shaftoe investigate a wrecked U-boat, discovering a consignment of Chinese gold bars, and sheets of a new, indecipherable code. Code-named Arethusa, this material ends up with Randy, presently beset by enemies like his sometime backer, The Dentist. He finds himself in a Filipino jail accused of drug smuggling, along with Shaftoe’s old associate, Enoch Root (root@eruditorum.org!). Since his jailers give him his laptop back, he knows someone’s listening. So he uses his computing skills to confuse the eavesdroppers, decodes Arethusa, and learns the location of a huge hoard of gold looted from Asia by the Japanese.
Detail-packed, uninhibitedly discursive, with dollops of heavy-handed humor, and set forth in the author’s usual vainglorious style; still, there’s surprisingly little actual plot. And the huge chunks of baldly technical material might fascinate NSA chiefs, computer nerds, and budding entrepreneurs, but ordinary readers are likely to balk: showtime, with lumps.Pub Date: May 4, 1999
ISBN: 0-380-97346-4
Page Count: 928
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1999
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