A zealous, persistently amusing detective tale.
Sleuth Carnegie Fitch returns to investigate a dubious new religion headed by a dangerous quasi-preacher in the second installment of a mystery series about him.
Despite successfully closing a case the year before, unlicensed Vancouver private eye Fitch has given up his office. Now driving a tow truck, he still has the PI “itch” and is currently working pro bono in his search for a missing calico cat. But he may have something more substantial when his sexual partner, Adora Carmichael, asks him to keep an eye out for a “kooky” local religion and its ruckus-causing preacher. Fitch sits in on a meeting of the Disciples of the Sacred Glow and quickly knows something is indeed wrong. Preacher Quincy Quest is actually Copernicus Janssen, an ex-dentist whom Fitch knows, from years ago, is bad news. This discovery leads to a paying client: Kathleen Brasher, whose son, Hugo, inexplicably closed the family business, and the Disciples now meet at the company’s former warehouse. But facing off against Janssen won’t be easy. The preacher also remembers Fitch and, aware of what the PI is up to, points two muscle-bound security men in his direction. But Fitch’s biggest threat is “the glow,” the DSG’s supposedly healing light that, in reality, precipitates a horrifying experience. Though the villain is immediately clear, Lester’s (Dead Clown Blues, 2017, etc.) briskly paced novella still allows for scenes of investigation. Fitch, for one, looks into an old murder that may have ties to Janssen. The baddies are unquestionably menacing and sometimes use Fitch as a punching bag; the story, however, as in the preceding installment, is predominantly humorous. Fitch’s endless wisecracks are more winsome than cynical, and the best scenes consist entirely of dialogue. Despite Adora’s status as a femme fatale having engaged in criminal activity in the past, the story’s standout character is Ellie Stevens. She’s a whip-smart teen who aids Fitch and has “the resourcefulness and the coffee habit of a 40-year-old.”
A zealous, persistently amusing detective tale.Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-948235-16-7
Page Count: 168
Publisher: Shotgun Honey
Review Posted Online: Feb. 10, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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