Hip, slick, and surprisingly deft: a strangely uplifting tale of perfectly dreadful people.
A Dublin novelist/film editor debuts here with a taut, richly understated crime thriller, the first in a series, about a bad man trapped in his own dark world.
Harry Fielding is one of those useful bastards you don’t want to get too close to. An “understrapper” (i.e., gofer) at Britain’s MI5, Harry is so shady even his own boss doesn’t like to take phone calls from him. But when there’s a nasty bit of work to be attended to—be it blackmail, eavesdropping, money-laundering, or simple violence—Harry’s your man. Given his line of work, it’s understandable that Harry hasn’t an abundance of friends. He lives alone and subsists mainly on airline meals that he buys in bulk. Nonetheless, he manages to become friendly with Lisa Talbot, his next-door neighbor, whom Harry witnessing murdering her brother-in-law one night. As a kindred spirit, Harry declines to turn her in, but Lisa is caught all the same and packed off to jail. Later, Harry is sent to take photographs of a cabinet minister in flagrante delicto with his young mistress. Unfortunately, he ends up taking snaps of a murder instead—since the cabinet minister goes rather overboard this time and stabs the girl to death. All in a day’s work, of course: Harry checks in with the office and is told to help the man hush the business up. So the cabinet minister gets hustled back home and the poor girl’s body is dealt with as discreetly as Harry can manage. He doesn’t let on about the photos, however—yet. Eventually Harry meets and falls in love (or at least goes to bed) with Maureen Talbot, Lisa’s sister. Lisa had killed Maureen’s husband because he’d been beating Maureen mercilessly; now Maureen feels terrible that Lisa is languishing behind bars on her account. If only there were some way to help—which is to say, if only Harry had a heart. Perhaps his training as a blackmailer will come in useful after all—unless the cabinet minister is smarter than Harry. It’s a close call.
Hip, slick, and surprisingly deft: a strangely uplifting tale of perfectly dreadful people.Pub Date: June 25, 2002
ISBN: 0-14-200208-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
A murder is committed in a stalled transcontinental train in the Balkans, and every passenger has a watertight alibi. But Hercule Poirot finds a way.
**Note: This classic Agatha Christie mystery was originally published in England as Murder on the Orient Express, but in the United States as Murder in the Calais Coach. Kirkus reviewed the book in 1934 under the original US title, but we changed the title in our database to the now recognizable title Murder on the Orient Express. This is the only name now known for the book. The reason the US publisher, Dodd Mead, did not use the UK title in 1934 was to avoid confusion with the 1932 Graham Greene novel, Orient Express.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1934
ISBN: 978-0062073495
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1934
The parts with Nero Wolfe, the only character Goldsborough brings to life, are almost worth waiting for.
In Archie Goodwin's 15th adventure since the death of his creator, Rex Stout, his gossipy Aunt Edna Wainwright lures him from 34th Street to his carefully unnamed hometown in Ohio to investigate the death of a well-hated bank president.
Tom Blankenship, the local police chief, thinks there’s no case since Logan Mulgrew shot himself. But Archie’s mother, Marjorie Goodwin, and Aunt Edna know lots of people with reason to have killed him. Mulgrew drove rival banker Charles Purcell out of business, forcing Purcell to get work as an auto mechanic, and foreclosed on dairy farmer Harold Mapes’ spread. Lester Newman is convinced that Mulgrew murdered his ailing wife, Lester’s sister, so that he could romance her nurse, Carrie Yeager. And Donna Newman, Lester’s granddaughter, might have had an eye on her great-uncle’s substantial estate. Nor is Archie limited to mulling over his relatives’ gossip, for Trumpet reporter Verna Kay Padgett, whose apartment window was shot out the night her column raised questions about the alleged suicide, is perfectly willing to publish a floridly actionable summary of the leading suspects that delights her editor, shocks Archie, and infuriates everyone else. The one person missing is Archie’s boss, Nero Wolfe (Death of an Art Collector, 2019, etc.), and fans will breathe a sigh of relief when he appears at Marjorie’s door, debriefs Archie, notices a telltale clue, prepares dinner for everyone, sleeps on his discovery, and arranges a meeting of all parties in Marjorie’s living room in which he names the killer.
The parts with Nero Wolfe, the only character Goldsborough brings to life, are almost worth waiting for.Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5988-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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