An addicting thriller with murder, mystery and Hitchcock.
A thrilling Hollywood whodunit set in Canada.
Hollywood public-relations superstar Joe Bernardi is back. He’s working in Quebec City on the set of Alfred Hitchcock’s I Confess, starring Montgomery Clift and Anne Baxter, trying to do damage control for the ever-volatile relationship between Clift and Hitchcock. The director thinks actors should be seen and not heard (unless filming a scene), and Clift wants to be more than a puppet. In the midst of these problems, Joe starts a small relationship with Jeanne d’Arcy, a member of the Quebec Province Film Commission. When Jeanne’s ex-boyfriend Daniel Bruckner, a prominent attorney involved in a high-profile mob case, is found murdered in his apartment, Jeanne is the key suspect, having been seen arguing with Daniel just hours before his death. Joe assures the police of Jeanne’s innocence and soon begins his own investigation, with many potential murderers surrounding him. Could it have been Daniel’s wife? Her lover? Daniel’s business partner? Or was this a mob hit? Each discovery leads Joe closer to danger. Fischer’s (Jezebel in Blue Satin, 2011, etc.) credits as a Hollywood screenwriter include Murder, She Wrote; Columbo; and a 1985 Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America, so it’s no surprise that he knows how to hook readers. Though there are a handful of famous faces in the novel, they’re not the key players. Unlike on the movie sets Joe frequents, he’s the star of this show, and fans of this series will thoroughly enjoy his step back into the spotlight. The work itself is well-paced, with exceptional, believable dialogue and development. This is no stop/start mystery: Everything flows well, and the characters are complex. Fischer also did a splendid job of researching his subject. Though it’s no secret that Clift was a method actor and that he and Hitchcock did not get along, Clift makes reference to “Elizabeth” coming to visit him, a nod to Elizabeth Taylor, one of the actor’s closest friends. These little tidbits of information add fullness and reality to the Hollywood portion of the tale. Joe’s latest turn is not only for fans of the series, but for anyone who loves a good whodunit.
An addicting thriller with murder, mystery and Hitchcock.Pub Date: July 15, 2013
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 257
Publisher: The Grove Point Press
Review Posted Online: July 9, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A short, simple, and sweet tale about two friends and a horse.
A novel tells the story of two spirited girls who set out to save a lame foal in 1952.
Mary, age 12, lacks muscle control of her legs and must use a wheelchair. Her life is constantly interrupted by trips with her widower father to assorted doctors, all of whom have failed to help her. Mary tolerates the treatments, hoping to one day walk unassisted, but her true passion involves horses. Possessing a library filled with horse books, she loves watching and drawing the animals at a neighboring farm. She longs to own one herself. But her father, overprotective due to her disability and his own lingering grief over Mary’s dead mother, makes her keep her distance. Mary befriends Laura, the emotionally neglected daughter of the wealthy neighboring farm owners, and the two share secret buggy rides. Both girls are attracted to Illusion, a beautiful red bay filly on the farm. Mary learns that Illusion is to be put down by a veterinarian because of a lame leg. Horrified, she decides to talk to the barn manager about the horse (“Isn’t it okay for her to live even if she’s not perfect? I think she deserves a chance”). Soon, Mary and Laura attempt to raise money to save Illusion. At the same time, Mary begins to gain control of her legs thanks to water therapy and secret therapeutic riding with Laura. There is indeed a great deal of poignancy in a story of a girl with a disability fighting to defend the intrinsic value of a lame animal. But this book, the first installment of the Dream Horse Adventure Series, would be twice as touching if Mary interacted with Illusion more. In the tale’s opening, she watches the foal from afar, but she actually spends very little time with the filly she tries so hard to protect. This turns out to be a strange development given the degree to which the narrative relies on her devotion. Count (Selah’s Sweet Dream, 2015) draws Mary and Laura in broad but believable strokes, defined mainly by their unrelenting pluckiness in the face of adversity. While the work tackles disability, death, and grief, Mary’s and Laura’s environments are so idyllic and their optimism and perseverance so remarkable that the story retains an aura of uncomplicated gentleness throughout.
A short, simple, and sweet tale about two friends and a horse.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Hastings Creations Group
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Therapeutic, moving verse from a promising new talent.
Keridan’s poetry testifies to the pain of love and loss—and to the possibility of healing in the aftermath.
The literary critic Geoffrey Hartman once wrote that literature—and poetry, in particular—can help us “read the wound” of trauma. That is, it can allow one to express and explain one’s deepest hurts when everyday language fails. Keridan appears to have a similar understanding of poetry. She writes in “Foreword,” the opening work of her debut collection, that “pain frequently uses words as an escape route / (oh, how I know).” Many words—and a great deal of pain—escape in this volume, but the result is healing: “the ending is happy / the beginning was horrific / so let’s start there.” The book, then, tracks the process of recovery in the wake of suffering, and often, this suffering is brought on by romantic relationships gone wrong. An early untitled poem opens, “I die a little / taking pieces of me to feed the fire / that keeps him warm / you don’t notice that it’s a slow death / when you’re disappearing little by little.” The author’s imagery here—of the self fueling the dying fire of love—is simultaneously subtle and wrenching. But the poem’s message, amplified elsewhere in the book, is clear: We go wrong if we destructively give ourselves over to others, and healing comes only when we turn our energies back to our own good. Later poems, therefore, reveal that self-definition often equals strength. The process is painful but salutary; when “you’re left unprotected / surrounded by chaos with nothing you / can depend on / except yourself / and that’s when you gather the pieces / of the life you lost / and use them to build the life you want.” The “life you want” is an elusive goal, and the author knows that the path to self-definition is fraught with peril—but her collection may give strength to those who walk it.
Therapeutic, moving verse from a promising new talent.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-72770-538-6
Page Count: 196
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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