Time and place are fully realized in this murder story, making for a fascinating period piece.
Brighton spins a tale of murder and revenge in Gilded Age Buffalo in this thriller.
A very scandalous divorce looms for Alicia and Edward Miller, but Edward is found bludgeoned to death on New Year’s Day 1902, before it can happen. Not long after, Alicia’s lover—and a key suspect in the killing—Arthur Pendle, is (along with his wife, Cassandra) killed when their car is demolished at a railroad crossing. Sarah Payne, who loved Edward (though it was never consummated) goes on to found the Avenging Angel Detective Agency, fulfilling a dream born of her devotion to Sherlock Holmes stories. A trove of love letters that Arthur had sent to Alicia (which he told her to destroy, but she could not bear to do so) contains details of Arthur’s secret life as a bagman and fixer for the corrupt district attorney, Terry Penrose, a man who would not hesitate to have his own mother killed in pursuit of his ambitions. As various parties seek the letters, the spunky Sarah involves herself in the situation at great risk to her own life. Along the way we meet a dangerous psychotic, who convinces himself that he is in love with Sarah, and the hulking Harry Price, who is sent to kill her. The author is a talented storyteller, and it is hard to resist the very detailed and authentic world he creates, all leavened with a strong sense of irony: As Brighton writes, President McKinley was shot in Buffalo and lingered for five days before expiring, “still in agony and still in Buffalo.” Alicia Miller is an indelible character, a woman who came from the wrong side of the tracks to claw her way into Ashwood society. Sex is her weapon and she knows how to use it—in need of free legal counsel, she seduces a lawyer, then threatens to tell his wife. In her way, she is as ruthless as Terry Penrose, yet the reader feels for her and even roots for her. She and Sarah are wonderful complements and effectively drive the plot.
Time and place are fully realized in this murder story, making for a fascinating period piece.Pub Date: June 27, 2023
ISBN: 9798987696408
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Ashwood Press
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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