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
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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