A sometimes-enjoyable read for mystery fans, but its ending fizzles.
Kelly’s (The Black Jade, 2018, etc.) Santa Monica–based gumshoe, Frank Murphy, is back to investigate the death of a high-end hotel chef.
On the morning of July 2, 1933, the lifeless body of Lucien Dubois is found in his seventh-floor room in the hotel where he works—The Californian in Santa Monica, which is frequented by Hollywood glitterati and tourists drawn to the beach and the hotel’s popular speak-easy. It’s the big July Fourth weekend, and also the hotel’s one-year anniversary. Owner Mark Prism hopes to keep a lid on the bad news. Based on the recommendation of Los Angeles police Detective Jack Stark, he hires Murphy to investigate the cause of the chef’s death. It doesn’t take long for the 30-year-old PI to determine that Dubois has been poisoned. Together with his new partner and main squeeze, Monica Stone, Murphy sets out to solve the murder. Dubois was known as a playboy, so was his killer a spurned lover? An angry husband? Or perhaps his death was related to his gambling debts from frequent trips to a casino barge, the SS Crown, docked offshore; the Crown is also the liquor supplier for the Californian’s Anchor Bar speak-easy. Dubois was likely responsible for purchasing beverages for the club, which suggests a possible mob connection to his demise. Murphy works his sources, while Stone goes undercover as a dance hostess in the club and on the Crown. Overall, Kelly’s historical mystery is more intriguing for its portrayal of 1930s LA than for its noir-thriller elements. A couple of good action episodes pick up the pace, though, as when Stone is kidnapped and Murphy comes to her rescue. Sporadic flashbacks add details about secondary characters and keep readers a half step ahead of Murphy and Stone. Generally, though, the tension is rather mild, and the conclusion is disappointing. The author employs a dash of era-appropriate detective jargon (women are usually called “doll,” “honey,” or “kid”), but he also gets tangled in some strange linguistic slip-ups; the term “water closet,” for instance, is badly mangled as “toilet closet water compartment.”
A sometimes-enjoyable read for mystery fans, but its ending fizzles.Pub Date: Nov. 26, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-73084-048-7
Page Count: 204
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2020
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
