An enthusiastic plot and a swift pace combine with gritty characters in a satisfying thriller.
An aging private investigator tackles a missing person case amid the new millennium in Southern California in this novel.
Canadian author Elliott continues his Angel City series with the adventures of Los Angeles detective Mickey O’Rourke, a hardworking widower who drives a red 1969 Pontiac Catalina convertible, misses his wife, and embodies an ageless tenacity to solve crimes. As a veteran sleuth in his late 70s in 2000, he’s seen everything, so meeting his latest client, Bethany Summers, at her San Fernando Valley porn studio job is nothing to squirm over. The case (which he admits may be his last) involves the sudden disappearance of Jeffrey Strokes, an award-winning, highly compensated porn star on the rise. Running alongside O’Rourke’s investigation is the simmering history two years prior of East Compton couple Jemeka Johnson, a hair stylist, and her boyfriend, Ray-Ray, whom she suspects of being unfaithful. She follows him one night and ends up staring down the barrel of a drug-dealing gangster’s gun during a botched deal. A third subplot, occurring in 1999, features Richie and Alabama, a downtrodden couple subsisting on petty theft, violence, and heroin. They descend on LA to deal and partake in everything the edgy city has to offer—notably, a “big score” involving Strokes, who needs their stash to help with his porn star “stamina.” O’Rourke does his work briskly, sifting through possible suspects, from jealous porn co-stars to informants who confess to meeting Strokes’ shifty drug dealer before the actor vanished, including Bethany’s abusive boyfriend, Riccardo Milano, who has lots to hide. The storylines soon intermingle and coalesce on LA’s tense streets, creating a somewhat overly busy yet consistently gripping tale with many parts kept airborne by Elliott, whose prose never wavers from keeping readers engrossed and entertained. As in the author’s debut, Nobody Move (2019), this polished sequel is also a noir affair suffused with meticulous details and characters at the mercy of the druggy Southern California underbelly. Elliott also has an infectious sense of humor evident throughout the story: an actor whose “lips were so blown up they could keep her afloat at sea” and a street punk sporting a Mohawk “so tall it could stab the sun.” The tale delivers plenty of fast-paced action and menacing bad guys to please hardcore fans of crime fiction.
An enthusiastic plot and a swift pace combine with gritty characters in a satisfying thriller.Pub Date: Aug. 24, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-99-908683-1
Page Count: 314
Publisher: Into the Void
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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