A fun and captivating historical noir.
In this novel, a private investigator stumbles on a large conspiracy when a real estate developer starts snatching up land in 1950s San Francisco.
In 1957, Katsuhiro “Kats” Takemoto is watching Alfred Hitchcock direct the film Vertigo. Kats was brought in to help James Stewart prepare for the role of a San Francisco private detective and then was retained by the studio (“Stewart needed security and a driver while he was in town and said he wanted Kats”). After the movie wraps, Kats goes back to his job as a private eye, taking the case of a man named Anton Vello, who is trying to save his family business from unscrupulous developers. The goal of the developers seems to be to buy land for a new baseball stadium for the Giants. But as Kats investigates, he quickly sees that something fishy is going on with the people who are trying to drive out Anton’s family and others in the mostly immigrant community. A secretary named Molly Hayes, who works for the developers, finds their actions morally dubious and agrees to help Kats. Kats is juggling a few other cases, and his path keeps crossing with Molly’s, leading them to grow closer. Also in the mix is Kats’ friend Shig Murao, who manages the City Lights bookstore. As Kats continues to investigate, it becomes clear that there’s a much bigger conspiracy at work, and the culprits aren’t above using violence to get their way. Kageyama’s novel offers a bracing look at postwar San Francisco. Kats is still dealing with the fallout of World War II, during which his family surrendered much of its property and he served in the Army. Many of the characters are first-generation Americans, and a recurring theme focuses on immigrant identities. The story, which blends historical fiction and noir, is well researched, with a lot of intriguing period details about San Francisco. Readers who adore immersive settings will find plenty to love here. There are also some striking cameos, from luminaries like Stewart and Allen Ginsberg to such lesser-known figures as blues singer Gladys Bentley.
A fun and captivating historical noir.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-940300-63-4
Page Count: 364
Publisher: St. Petersburg Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
It's hard to read but hard to look away from.
When two women who share a birthday meet, a journalist becomes the subject of her own true-crime mystery.
On their 45th birthdays, Josie Fair and Alix Summer meet at a pub and discover they were born not only on the same day, but in the same hospital. Alix is a successful journalist, and Josie convinces Alix that her story is worth telling: Josie met her husband when she was 13 and he was 40. “I can see that maybe I was being used, that maybe I was even being groomed?” she confesses to Alix. “But that feeling of being powerful, right at the start, when I was still in control. I miss that sometimes. I really do. And what I’d like, more than anything, is to get it back.” From this premise Alix creates a Netflix series, Hi! I’m Your Birthday Twin! which investigates Josie’s life as she reconciles what happened to her as a teen and seeks a new path. With the story unfinished, the narrative unfolds in the present tense, with prose that jingles like song lyrics: “He turns to see if the girl is behind him, and sees her wishy-washy, wavy-wavy, in double vision through the glass windows of the hotel.” Alix is both intrigued and repulsed by Josie, but she initially gives her the benefit of the doubt. After all, Alix’s husband, Nathan, has a drinking problem, and Alix knows what it’s like to be reluctant to leave a bad situation. But Josie seems more interested in being part of Alix’s seemingly glamorous life than she is in fixing her own, and when three people end up dead and Alix’s life is turned upside down, the evidence points to Josie—and turns the TV series into a murder mystery. Transcripts from Alix’s interviews alternate with the narrative, offering increasingly varied perspectives on Josie’s story as told by her neighbors, friends, and family members. With so many versions of events, the ending shatters, leaving readers to decide whose is the truth.
It's hard to read but hard to look away from.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2023
ISBN: 9781982179007
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
A tale that’s hard to believe but easy to swallow in a single gulp.
A bear is hunting prey in Wyoming’s Bighorns. And not just any bear.
It’s bad enough that Clay Hutmacher, who manages the Double Diamond Ranch, has lost his son, Clay Jr., to a vicious attack by a grizzly bear. What’s much worse is that Clay Jr.—who’d been about to pop the question to game warden Joe Pickett’s daughter, Sheridan—is only the first of the victims over an exceptionally broad geographical area. Marshal Marvin Bertignolli is clawed and bitten to death over in Hanna. Sgt. Ryan Winner is found bleeding out north of Rawlins. Former Twelve Sleep County prosecutor Dulcie Schalk, one of two survivors of an ambush, doesn’t survive her final encounter. The four experts chosen to kill the grizzly rope Joe into their expedition, but since their quarry keeps turning up far from the last sighting, the most meaningful confrontation the Predator Attack Team has is with a pair of Mama Bears, animal rights activists who demand due process for Tisiphone, as they’ve dubbed the presumed killer. Box, who’s far too canny to leave Tisiphone alone on center stage, follows Joe’s old antagonist Dallas Cates as the ex–rodeo star is released from prison and embarks on his revenge tour, which takes him to Lee Ogburn-Russell, an inventor whose life Dallas saved, and Axel Soledad, a correspondent who shares so many enemies with Dallas that he suggests they go after them together. Franchise fans will appreciate new details about Joe’s complicated family, the obligatory high-country landscapes, and yet another corrupt law enforcer.
A tale that’s hard to believe but easy to swallow in a single gulp.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9780593331347
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
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