by Paul Sussman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 27, 2003
A plot as complex as a hall of mirrors, and almost as gripping as a death threat.
An ancient Egyptian tomb holds the key to a grisly string of modern-day murders, in an engaging first outing by archaeologist Sussman.
In Egypt, they say, you can’t dig a grave without hitting a pharaoh’s tomb. This has made the dusty and impoverished country famous for two ancient professions: archaeology and antiquities smuggling. A most distinguished representative of the former was Michael Mullray, an English Egyptologist recently found murdered at an excavation in Saqqara, while one of the shadier members of the latter was Abu Nayar, whose mutilated corpse washed up on the banks of the Nile at about the same time. Inspector Yuseuf Khalifa of the Luxor Police is charged with solving the crimes, and he immediately suspects a link between the killings. His suspicions are confirmed when an elderly antiquities dealer in Cairo is murdered in his shop—but not during a burglary. Khalifa is aided in his investigation by Mullray’s daughter Tara, who mentions that the necropolis her father had been excavating was filled with the smell of cigar smoke after her father’s murder. Had this anything to do with the fact that both the shopkeeper’s and Nayar’s corpses were riddled with cigar burns? Khalifa also finds that the Egyptian and British governments are extremely interested in the case—though the representatives of the British embassy and the Egyptian Antiquities Bureau who join the investigation seem more interested in learning how much he knows than in providing him with any information from their files. How political can archaeology be? Let’s just say that, somewhere in the background, the mysterious figure of dreaded Egyptian terrorist Sayf al-Tha’r looms over the case—and over Khalifa himself. And, soon enough, Khalifa and Tara will be investigating a plot against their own lives.
A plot as complex as a hall of mirrors, and almost as gripping as a death threat.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2003
ISBN: 0-312-30153-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2002
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by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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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
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2004
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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