A fun, short read, despite some questionable errors.
Kelly’s (Clover Field, 2015, etc.) mystery offers an homage to classic crime novels of the 1930s and ’40s with this tribute to the work of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and other crime novelists.
In 1934 San Francisco (with all of its requisite fog), Riley Sullivan is a 27-year-old private investigator who seems a bit soft-boiled, at least for now. He drinks, smokes, and womanizes, drives a beat-up Pontiac, and lives on a houseboat on the Bay. A lawyer for the San Francisco Port Authority hires him to look into the heist of a delivery intended for Madame Dalyu Wu, the owner of a local gallery that deals in imported Chinese art: A shipment of statues from Shanghai was stolen at the port of entry. Riley, who’s barely scraping by, is happy to get the job, but right from the get-go, people involved in the case start dying—and eventually he uncovers a drug-smuggling ring. This is an adventure that has plenty of close shaves and gunplay, but the most entertaining elements of the novel are its colorful characters. For example, Riley’s main squeeze is Amy Morgan (a Miss California runner-up) who keeps him on “probation,” as she’s suspicious about his other possible dalliances. He also works with Bureau of Narcotics special agent Gina Gallo, who’s a deadly shot, as well as old flame Mellificent McNally, an ace reporter for the San Francisco Examiner. All the women are unsurprisingly described as gorgeous, but in a nice nod to the putative morality of classic crime fiction, there are no sex scenes here. Indeed, Kelly seems to be having a lot of fun with his homage, although readers may differ on whether some of his sendups are too over the top. It should be noted, though, that the text has its share of distracting mistakes, such as “pant’s pocket” and “ ‘Sit down, Sullivan,’ he smiled at me mendaciously”; at one point, Riley even calls McNally by the wrong name.
A fun, short read, despite some questionable errors.Pub Date: May 26, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-71906-165-0
Page Count: 156
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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