Mixing romance and revenge, Cherry blends a potent, readable cocktail likely to appeal to fans of classic noir.
In this noirish, sleek debut, a homicide cop finds his life complicated by a sexy stranger in search of revenge.
When Detective Vince Bonelli falls for something—or someone—he falls hard. Celibate for 20 years after his first breakup, the philosopher/warrior (who had ambitions of being a priest) runs into trouble in line at the bakery one day: Gina Gallo, a sultry, mysterious chain smoker, jumps into his bed and his life. He is instantaneously smitten, though—ever the cop—he has to wonder: What would a knockout be doing with a potbellied mug like him? Gina, the archetypal femme fatale, plays it aloof—she destroys Vince at chess and then stays up at night, staring forlornly out the window, naked, smoking cigarettes. As it turns out, Gina is really Regan—the daughter of an informant who fell victim to the crime boss Vince is chasing. When she takes a shot at the gangster responsible for her mother’s death and Vince gets in the way, the doomed lovers are torn apart. Author Cherry (Christmas Cracker, 2012) jumps forward 10 years to find Vince has become a basketball-playing priest who drinks too much and can’t shake the memory of lost love. This is, in many ways, the most surprising and best section. In one wrenching scene, Vince wakes up after a bender (and near sexual indiscretion) to discover that he slept through a parishioner’s call for last rites. At the hospital, a nurse glances at him, “the smell of stale wine floating around him like an ungodly aura, and gave a disapproving frown”; the reader feels Vince’s embarrassment acutely. When Gina/Regan inevitably comes knocking, as well as the gangsters still looking for revenge, Vince tries to shake off the booze, and the novel hurtles toward its climax. By emphasizing Vince’s inner conflict and flaws, underwriting the sex and violence, and keeping the tone light, Cherry displays a talent for turning what may be a clichéd plot into character-driven fun. The stakes are low, but the author finds a healthy balance between the inner conflicts of the characters and their outer actions, fulfilling our expectations of the genre.
Mixing romance and revenge, Cherry blends a potent, readable cocktail likely to appeal to fans of classic noir.Pub Date: July 23, 2013
ISBN: 978-1489562227
Page Count: 390
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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