A little too much of a good thing.
The famous names of 1930s pulp fiction come together for a wild romp in Malmont’s inventive, if a bit overlong, first novel.
Walter Gibson, Robert Heinlein, Lester Dent, L. Ron Hubbard—they were the kings of New York’s Depression-era pulp-fiction scene, creating beloved characters like The Shadow and Doc Savage. It’s doubtful, though, that they ever found themselves in the sort of adventure Malmont has concocted for them here. Taking the writers’ real lives as a starting point, he slips them into a story worthy of their own famously lurid imaginations, transforming them from mere scribblers into something more akin to super-friends. Chinese warrior Zhang Mei has made a deal with a rogue American colonel to snag a wad of cash and a supply of poison gas with which he hopes to reunite his homeland and chase out the invading Japanese. A simple enough scheme, or so it seems, until Gibson and Dent, with their sidekicks Hubbard and Heinlein, stumble across the plot in the service of various writerly pursuits. As literary types are wont to do, they make a hash of things, blowing Zhang Mei’s plan and nearly getting themselves killed several times over in the process. Malmont takes full advantage of his chosen setting, soaking his story in sinister, shadowy city atmosphere. He does an equally nice job working in cameos from big figures of the age (a scene wherein Gibson and a young Orson Welles go to the movies is particularly fun). The plot itself, though, could have used a bit more pruning. As the desperate scrapes and daring escapes pile up one after another, excitement begins to fade to tedium. The merry band’s adventures often seem strung together by the thinnest of threads, and by their final dash to freedom, one cares less that they’re safe than that it’s over.
A little too much of a good thing.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-7432-8785-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Everyone is this meticulously crafted novel might be playing—or being played by—everyone else.
A hint of the supernatural spices the latest from a mystery master as two detectives try to probe the secrets teenage girls keep—and the lies they tell—after murder at a posh boarding school.
The Dublin novelist (Broken Harbor,2012, etc.) has few peers in her combination of literary stylishness and intricate, clockwork plotting. Here, French challenges herself and her readers with a narrative strategy that finds chapters alternating between two different time frames and points of view. One strand concerns four girls at exclusive St. Kilda’s who are so close they vow they won’t even have boyfriends. Four other girls from the school are their archrivals, more conventional and socially active. The novel pits the girls against each other almost as two gangs, with the plot pivoting on the death of a rich boy from a nearby school who had been sneaking out to see at least two of the girls. The second strand features the two detectives who spend a long day and night at the school, many months after the unsolved murder. Narrating these chapters is Stephen, a detective assigned to cold cases, who receives an unexpected visit from one of the girls, Holly, a daughter of one of Stephen’s colleagues on the force, who brings a postcard she’d found on a bulletin board known as “The Secret Place” that says “I know who killed him.” The ambitious Stephen, who has a history with both the girl and her father, brings the postcard to Conway, a hard-bitten female detective whose case this had been. The chapters narrated by Stephen concern their day of interrogation and investigation at the school, while the alternating ones from the girls’ perspectives cover the school year leading up to the murder and its aftermath. Beyond the murder mystery, which leaves the reader in suspense throughout, the novel explores the mysteries of friendship, loyalty and betrayal, not only among adolescents, but within the police force as well.
Everyone is this meticulously crafted novel might be playing—or being played by—everyone else.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-670-02632-6
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
PROFILES
Readers who are new to the series will quickly catch up. Juicy neighborhood gossip and a good dose of humor build up to a...
In the second installment of the Medlar Mystery series, an author and her partners-in-solving-crime investigate the murder of an elderly woman in Lachlan, Florida.
“Today, living alone is considered to be an almost criminal act,” says Sara Medlar, author and amateur sleuth. Perhaps that’s why Janet Beeson was found dead in her home with a knife in her chest, poison dripping from her mouth, and a bullet in her head. Other than her best friend, Sylvia Alden, who killed herself two years ago, Janet had no close friends—and no real enemies. According to all the neighbors who admit they’ve taunted her, vandalized her property, and called her a witch over the years, Janet hadn’t done anything to deserve it. If anything, they’re surprised she’d never tried to murder any of them. Sara doesn’t want to get involved, but when Sheriff Daryl Flynn asks her to stop by the crime scene to take pictures, she can’t get Janet’s story out of her head. With the help of her niece, realtor Kate Medlar, and Jack Wyatt, the grandson of her old flame, Sara continues to poke her nose around town to find out why this supposedly sweet old lady’s life went sour. And she seems to find a new scandal around every corner. Meanwhile, Kate prods the neighbors for stories about her late father, and Jack’s crush on Kate remains unrequited.
Readers who are new to the series will quickly catch up. Juicy neighborhood gossip and a good dose of humor build up to a dramatic ending that’s equal parts wicked and fun.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7783-0829-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harlequin MIRA
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
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