An engrossing historical murder mystery.
In this first installment of a new mystery series set in Depression-era London, a private detective with a shadowy past goes up against fascists as he tries to solve a boy’s murder.
George Harley is a Cockney PI who hobnobs with a colorful assortment of criminals and who occasionally uses illegal methods to solve his cases. One night, he rescues a teenage rent boy from being roughed up by attackers in a Piccadilly Circus alleyway. Unfortunately, the boy’s safety is short-lived, as someone murders him in Harley’s home while the private eye is out; the only witness is a neighbor who claims to have been drugged by a mysterious, masked intruder. Harley investigates the boy’s murder with the assistance of an old military friend from the Great War, Gen. Sir Frederic Wilberforce Swales, who happens to be the new metropolitan police commissioner; and DC Pearson, a naïve but upstanding new cop from the West Country. However, deep corruption in the police force and an apparent connection with the British Brotherhood of Fascists make the mystery murkier than it initially seems. As Harley tries to solve the case, he faces Italian gymnasts-turned–Mafia informants, Jewish boxers moonlighting as mobsters’ muscle, British secret agents, and the “Bright Young Things” of the English upper class. Thanks to debut author LeComber’s expert use of cockney slang and other lingo of the period, readers will practically see the city’s pea-soup smog and smell Harley’s ubiquitous Gold Flake cigarettes wafting off the page. The story is pitch-dark, and some decent, likable characters meet graphically gruesome ends, but readers who have a stomach for such scenes will eat this mystery up. They’ll also become attached to Harley’s gruff, growling manner and clever turns of phrase—even if some of them are hard to understand without the book’s glossary close at hand—and pleased to learn that LeComber has future adventures planned for him in London’s colorful criminal underground.
An engrossing historical murder mystery.Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-0993047206
Page Count: 460
Publisher: Diablo Books
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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