Readers who don't mind the hiccup of the flashbacks that interrupt every third scene to backtrack anywhere from ten minutes...
Years after she was scarred and nearly killed by a double-dealing international criminal, a British undercover cop throws over the traces to go after him on her own—a busy first novel from journalist Eddy (Hunting Marco Polo, 1991, etc.)
"Finish it . . . Get it done," Inspector Grace Flint can still hear Frank Harling tell the confederate who murdered her partner in the sting operation that left her face shattered and her spirit cowed. Now that both have been rebuilt, she's been shuffled off to a desk job in Miami as the UK liaison to the Federal Crimes Joint Task Force. But when magnetic FBI officer Aldus Cutter invites her to get back in the saddle by posing as his wife to catch a merchant of counterfeit currency, two new developments end up emerging with startling clarity: (1) a line on what Harling's been up to since Flint last saw him fleeing the scene and where he might be holed up, and (2) an unmistakable hint that he's on the payroll of MI5, eating Her Majesty's bread along with Flint. Cutter's task force colleagues go after Harling, but they're a long step behind eager Flint. And a good thing too, because what Flint uncovers in her search for her would-be killer leads to an international conspiracy intricate and ambitious even by the standards of spy fiction, one whose tentacles reach to the highest levels of all the government agencies who are supposed to be backing Flint up-but may now be more interested in tracking her down.
Readers who don't mind the hiccup of the flashbacks that interrupt every third scene to backtrack anywhere from ten minutes ago to the heroine's childhood will find lots more surprises up Eddy's sleeve. A welcome debut, with a heroine volcanic enough for a series. (Film rights to Columbia)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2000
ISBN: 0-399-14653-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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