Thoroughly engrossing, both the investigators and their investigations.
An uncle-nephew private eye team takes on dual cases involving the rape of a 17-year-old girl and a probable murder in this second volume of a mystery series.
The newest client for Dallas private investigators Jack Crocker and his sister’s ex-Marine son, Jimmy McGuire, is Ben Rogers, insurance company CFO. Ben wants to hire the gumshoes to find the McMillan University students who raped his teen daughter, Robyn, at a campus party. Cops and campus security have been no help, and Robyn, scared and withdrawn, offers scarce details on her assailants. Moreover, someone’s taunting her by sending videos and photos of her attack that disappear seconds later. Before they can make headway, Jack and Jimmy catch another case: Pastor J.D. Finley’s convinced his brotherly cousin Jackson Parks’ death wasn’t an accidental overdose or suicide, but murder instead. Oddly enough, an assistant district attorney who’s also died mysteriously was second chair for a decades-old murder trial on which Jackson was the sole black juror. And just out of prison is the man wrongfully convicted of said crime, perhaps craving retribution. The detectives alternate between the cases, determined to stop the rapists from hurting anyone else, as well as someone on a potential killing spree. Langer (Hide & Seek, 2014, etc.) deftly weaves the two cases, with Jack and Jimmy moving between them with interrogations, research, and stakeouts. The story wisely focuses a bit more on Robyn’s assault, with ample coverage of how the teen and her family are affected. Ben’s rage, for one, may add too much fuel to an already tense situation, and Robyn contemplates seeking no justice as a way to move past her trauma. The teen’s plot alone could have carried the entire thriller, but the risk factor’s boosted considerably with the likelihood of a killer on the loose. Meanwhile, the curious detectives, who live and work together, have contrasting personal lives: Jack tries repairing his relationship with his estranged wife, Crystal, while Jimmy’s hoping for a fresh romance.
Thoroughly engrossing, both the investigators and their investigations.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-692-81684-4
Page Count: 364
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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