While the author does not yet have the chops of a Michael Connelly or James Lee Burke, this tale nevertheless delivers a...
A debut crime novel brings together a severely conflicted newspaper editor, vigilantes and other bad guys, and the power brokers of the midsized city of Newcastle, Massachusetts.
Journalist Tucker Wattson is suffering for a number of reasons. Once a popular columnist for the Newcastle Chronicle, he eventually accepted a promotion to editor, and that job—chairing boring meetings, settling petty squabbles, jousting with the publisher—consumes him. Or maybe a large part of the problem lies in the midlife crisis he’s facing (he’s 44). At any rate, the married editor strays, meeting and falling half in love with the beautiful Lizbeth Saagen. Only later does he realize that she happens to be the current girlfriend of local bad boy Carl McSorley. Meanwhile, trouble is brewing in town. Ronald Jefferson was acquitted of rape, but vigilantes have now killed the young black college student and firebombed his defense attorney’s house. Rumors soon implicate certain members of the elite Blackthorn Club, the gathering place of Newcastle’s movers and shakers. Odermatt’s shrewd plot puts Tucker right in the middle of this mess. As the facts of the vigilantes’ actions begin to leak, will Tucker do the right thing and go to the police, or will he desperately try to save his reputation (and his marriage)? Odermatt performs a masterly job of detailing this man’s moral struggle. Another coup is to set so much of the action in the newsroom of the Chronicle. Other crime writers have used dogged newspaper reporters as protagonists, but Odermatt—who spent his career as a journalist—goes a step further, showing readers the gritty job of getting out a metropolitan daily (“There was something about the urgency and organized chaos of the newsroom in the last hours before deadline that made reporters and copy editors think that getting out the paper was the most exciting thing, perhaps the most important thing, that happened in the city each day”). It’s a nice touch and a device that he may want to use in future novels. The writing is, as one might expect, more than competent, and the characters remain well drawn for the most part.
While the author does not yet have the chops of a Michael Connelly or James Lee Burke, this tale nevertheless delivers a clever plot centered on a besieged journalist facing ominous forces.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5195-1240-6
Page Count: 238
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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