An immersive and affecting story of injustice and an exemplification of the unbreakable human spirit.
Two victims of abuse in mid-20th-century America fight for justice and survival.
In the summer of 1948, 22-year-old Billy Dalton is driving home through Kane County, North Carolina, when he comes across two cars blocking the road. One of these drives off as the other explodes, and Billy helps a young woman and her toddler daughter escape from the burning vehicle. Billy himself is badly burned and wakes in the hospital to find that nobody believes his story; there is no sign of the woman or her child or evidence of any cars other than his own. Racism is endemic in Kane County, as Billy, a White man, starts to realize when he is charged with drunken driving and placed in a jail, where he expresses concern over a Black inmate’s eye injury. The prisoner explains, “The jailer’s the one who gave it to me. They come get us and then take us out and beat us up anytime they want. No reason. Just because they can. They mostly leave white folks alone.” Billy is imprisoned without proper medical attention. His wounds fester, and he emerges badly disfigured to begin a new, unhappy life. The woman, it transpires, does exist. She is 22-year-old Lacey Evers, the unacknowledged daughter (through rape) of Judge Harkins, the corrupt presiding jurist of Kane County. United years later, can she and Billy find the justice they were denied? The narrative is simple but effective, buoyed by unforced dialogue that allows the story’s emotional impact to emerge naturally. Though Kane County is fictitious, the institutional corruption and power imbalance feel all too real. Unfortunately, Lubitz’s portrayal of the abominable treatment of Black people in America, a strong thematic thread throughout the novel, doesn’t quite ring true—not because such mistreatment didn’t exist but because the racial slurs are excessively softened, and Lubitz introduces a White character who helpfully calls it out. That said, Lacey and Billy are vivid representatives of a historical period that was all too frequently characterized by gross injustice. Their respective plights will invest readers in their story, and their endurance and eventual flourishing cannot help but inspire.
An immersive and affecting story of injustice and an exemplification of the unbreakable human spirit.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2023
ISBN: 9798372097766
Page Count: 347
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Squeamish readers will find this isn’t their cup of tea.
Dexter meets Killing Eve in Wallace’s dark comic thriller debut.
While accepting condolences following her father’s funeral, 30-something narrator Claire receives an email saying that one of her paintings is a finalist for a prize. But her joy is short-circuited the next morning when she learns in a second apologetic note that the initial email had been sent to the wrong Claire. The sender, Lucas Kane, is “terribly, terribly sorry” for his mistake. Claire, torn between her anger and suicidal thoughts, has doubts about his sincerity and stalks him to a London pub, where his fate is sealed: “I stare at Lucas Kane in real life, and within moments I know. He doesn’t look sorry.” She dispatches and buries Lucas in her back garden, but this crime does not go unnoticed. Proud of her meticulous standards as a serial killer, Claire wonders if her grief for her father is making her reckless as she seeks to identify the blackmailer among the members of her weekly bereavement support group. The female serial killer as antihero is a growing subgenre (see Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer, 2018), and Wallace’s sociopathic protagonist is a mordantly amusing addition; the tool she uses to interact with ordinary people while hiding her homicidal nature is especially sardonic: “Whenever I’m unsure of how I’m expected to respond, I use a cliché. Even if I’m not sure what it means, even if I use it incorrectly, no one ever seems to mind.” The well-written storyline tackles some tough subjects—dementia, elder abuse, and parental cruelty—but the convoluted plot starts to drag at the halfway point. Given the lack of empathy in Claire’s narration, most of the characters come across as not very likable, and the reader tires of her sneering contempt.
Squeamish readers will find this isn’t their cup of tea.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780143136170
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
Small-town claustrophobia and intimacies alike propel this twist-filled psychological thriller.
The loss of her police officer father and the discovery of an abandoned car in a local lake raise chilling questions regarding a young woman’s family history.
When Hazel Sharp returns to her hometown of Mirror Lake, North Carolina, for her father’s memorial, she and the other townspeople are confronted by a challenging double whammy: As they’re grieving the loss of beloved longtime police officer Detective Perry Holt, a disturbing sight appears in the lake, whose waterline is receding because of an ongoing drought—an old, unidentifiable car, which has likely been lurking there for years. Hazel temporarily leaves her Charlotte-based building-renovation business in the capable hands of her partners and reconnects with her brothers, Caden and Gage; her Uncle Roy; her old fling and neighbor, Nico; and her schoolfriend, Jamie, now a mother and married to Caden. Tiny, relentless suspicions rise to the metaphorical surface along with that waterlogged vehicle: There have been a slew of minor break-ins; two people go missing; and then, a second abandoned car is discovered. The novel digs deeper into Hazel’s family history—her father was a widow when he married Hazel’s mother, who later left the family, absconding with money and jewels—and Miranda, a consummate professional when it comes to exposing the small community tensions that naturally arise when people live in close proximity for generations, exposes revelation after twisty revelation: “Everything mattered disproportionately in a small town. Your success, but also your failure. Everyone knows might as well have been our town motto.”
Small-town claustrophobia and intimacies alike propel this twist-filled psychological thriller.Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781668010440
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Marysue Rucci Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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