This freelance vigilante fantasy is the first of a crime series most likely to appeal to movie buffs who wish the punchy...
The son of legendary filmmaker Preston Sturges debuts with the fast, funny, nostalgia-laden tale of a hero who slices through Gordian knots.
Dick Henry is the guy you go to when you’re snarled in red tape. Need to evict a tenant who won’t pay his rent, or get rid of a squatter who won’t fold his tent, without going through months of messy litigation? Henry’s your man. And he’s not just a hired thug, either. He’s happy to help Betty Fraiden protect her father, Franklin Tillman, from the Filipino woman he wants to bring to America to marry, even though she probably doesn’t exist except as a vacuum for Tillman’s savings. And he’s available to confirm porn producer Artie Benjamin’s fears that his wife is cheating on him. His very first day on the job, he discovers that Judy Benjamin is indeed conducting a torrid affair with Henry, who’s known her as Lynette the private-airline stewardess. But his further discovery that Judy, aka Lynette, has been a lot less private with her favors than with her coffee and tea leads the promising setup down a familiar, not very interesting road of multiple betrayals with violence, as Judy keeps swearing eternal loyalty to men about to die at her bidding. Will Henry be among them? Of course not.
This freelance vigilante fantasy is the first of a crime series most likely to appeal to movie buffs who wish the punchy dialogue from vintage film noir could be spiced with some serious sex.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4391-9417-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It’s hard to think of any writer since Flannery O’Connor, referenced at several key moments here, who’s succeeded as...
Slaughter’s latest break from the punishing travails of Dr. Sara Linton and Will Trent (The Kept Woman, 2016, etc.) uses a school shooting to reunite two sisters who’ve had compelling reasons for avoiding each other in the years since their own childhood horrors.
Twenty-eight years ago, two masked men broke into attorney Rusty Quinn’s Georgia home looking for the man of the house, the kind of lawyer who gives lawyers a bad name. In Rusty’s absence, things went south instantly, leaving Gamma Quinn dead, her daughter Samantha shot in the head and buried alive, and her daughter Charlotte fleeing in terror. Sam somehow survived and rose above her brain damage to become a successful New York patent attorney; Charlie remained in Pikeville, joined the criminal defense bar, and married ADA Ben Bernard. But she and Ben have separated; she’s taken solace in some quick sex with a stranger in a parking lot; and when she goes to the middle school where her one-night stand works as a history teacher to pick up the cellphone she left behind, she walks into the middle of a shooting that brings back all her own trauma. Goth girl Kelly Wilson admits she shot and killed Douglas Pinkman, the school principal, and 8-year-old Lucy Alexander, but Rusty, whose inbox is already overflowing with hate mail provoked by all the lowlifes he’s defended, is determined to serve as her attorney, with Sam as a most unlikely second chair. In addition to the multilayered conflicts among the Quinns and everyone else in town, Sam, who urged her sister to flee their childhood nightmare, and Charlie, who’s had to live with fleeing ever since, will have to deal with memories that make it hard for them to sit in the same room.
It’s hard to think of any writer since Flannery O’Connor, referenced at several key moments here, who’s succeeded as consistently as Slaughter at using horrific violence to evoke pity and terror. Whether she’s extending her franchise or creating stand-alones like this, she really does make your hair stand on end.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-243024-3
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Determined to shield her family from violence, a woman becomes a fierce freelance crime fighter in this mostly satisfying...
In the aftermath of a horrific crime, a woman makes herself over into a powerful protector—or perhaps an avenger.
Pinter (The Castle, 2019, etc.) already has the Henry Parker thriller series under his belt. In this book he introduces another potential series character, Rachel Marin. The story opens with a warm domestic scene of a young woman making dinner for her husband and two kids when a shattering (but undescribed) discovery intervenes. Jump ahead seven years, and single mom Rachel is living in another town several states away. When a mugger jumps her as she’s walking home from work, she leaves him bleeding in the street and hurries home to her bookish son, Eric, and sweet little daughter, Megan. Keeping them safe is her mission in life. But when she sees a news report about a body found on the ice beneath a nearby bridge, she’s riveted. The cops assigned to the case, detectives John Serrano and Leslie Tally, are shocked to discover the body is that of the town’s disgraced former mayor, Constance Wright. They’re even more shocked when Rachel, whom they don’t know, sends Serrano a message that the death was no suicide: “Constance Wright was murdered. And I can prove it.” When Serrano and Tally go to question Wright’s sketchy ex-husband, Rachel shows up at the same time, and they don’t know whether to order her away or be grateful for her help. Pinter builds a complex plot on the dual mysteries of Constance’s murder and Rachel’s transformation from suburban mom to crack investigator and lethal streetfighter. But the story has so many subplots and timelines that it can feel overstuffed, and some crucial questions asked early on are answered so late the reader might be surprised to be reminded of them. Pinter creates engaging characters, though, and keeps the suspense taut.
Determined to shield her family from violence, a woman becomes a fierce freelance crime fighter in this mostly satisfying thriller.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5420-0590-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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