It’s all good, not-so-clean fun, though the suspense suffers from those self-indulgent interpolations.
Buried pirate treasure is the come-on for this tongue-in-cheek yarn about a feisty Virginian and the scurvy knaves ranged against him.
The 17th-century Irish buccaneer Finster Doyle buried his loot beneath an island off the Virginia peninsula before the law caught up with him. Doyles have been living on Pirate Island ever since. (Pirates figured more prominently in The Pirate’s Daughter, 1997, Girardi’s second novel, than they do here, his fourth.) The last of the Doyles is 42-year-old Tim, raised by his beloved uncle Buck after his father died at sea. Tim later married the delectable Flor and lived with her in her native Spain until she threw him out after one affair too many. Now, the self-destructive Tim is back, devastated by Buck’s recent death, drinking himself into oblivion and confronting an anonymous death threat if he doesn’t leave again pronto. Tim’s not going anywhere; he loves the place, especially the pirate-themed miniature golf course Buck created, even though the mainland has gone horribly upscale in his long absence. Could developer and former drug dealer Roach Pompton be behind that death threat? And why is his shady lawyer Slough pressuring him to accept an anonymous offer for the island? The threats don’t stop. After attempted arson, two Irish hit men show up; swashbuckling Tim dispatches one of them with an antique Colt. Sandwiched between these developments are colorful episodes involving Doyle’s ancestors, including Finster’s own larger-than-life story. Unfortunately, they slow the momentum of Tim’s drama, while sharing an over-the-top quality. Eventually, it becomes clear the pirate treasure is a red herring: Tim is up against a corporate conspiracy masterminded by a flamboyant Irish queen who is also a ruthless businessman. Our guy is kidnapped, but still manages to have bathtub sex with the businessman’s daughter before (finally) a let-’er-rip straightaway leading to two showdowns and some impressive firepower.
It’s all good, not-so-clean fun, though the suspense suffers from those self-indulgent interpolations.Pub Date: March 15, 2004
ISBN: 1-932112-18-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Justin, Charles
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2004
Locke, having stockpiled an acclaimed array of crime novels (Pleasantville, 2015, etc.), deserves a career breakthrough for...
What appears at first to be a double hate crime in a tiny Texas town turns out to be much more complicated—and more painful—than it seems.
With a degree from Princeton and two years of law school under his belt, Darren Mathews could have easily taken his place among the elite of African-American attorneys. Instead, he followed his uncle’s lead to become a Texas Ranger. “What is it about that damn badge?” his estranged wife, Lisa, asks. “It was never intended for you.” Darren often wonders if she’s right but nonetheless finds his badge useful “for working homicides with a racial element—murders with a particularly ugly taint.” The East Texas town of Lark is small enough to drive through “in the time it [takes] to sneeze,” but it’s big enough to have had not one, but two such murders. One of the victims is a black lawyer from Chicago, the kind of crusader-advocate Darren could have been if he’d stayed on his original path; the other is a young white woman, a local resident. Both battered bodies were found in a nearby bayou. His job already jeopardized by his role in a race-related murder case in another part of the state, Darren eases his way into Lark, where even his presence is enough to raise hackles among both the town’s white and black residents; some of the latter, especially, seem reluctant and evasive in their conversations with him. Besides their mysterious resistance, Darren also has to deal with a hostile sheriff, the white supremacist husband of the dead woman, and the dead lawyer’s moody widow, who flies into town with her own worst suspicions as to what her husband was doing down there. All the easily available facts imply some sordid business that could cause the whole town to explode. But the deeper Darren digs into the case, encountering lives steeped in his home state’s musical and social history, the more he begins to distrust his professional—and personal—instincts.
Locke, having stockpiled an acclaimed array of crime novels (Pleasantville, 2015, etc.), deserves a career breakthrough for this deftly plotted whodunit whose writing pulses throughout with a raw, blues-inflected lyricism.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-36329-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Mulholland Books/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
A top-notch psychological thriller.
In Hoag’s (The 9th Girl, 2013, etc.) latest, talented young newscaster Dana Nolan is left to navigate a psychological maze after escaping a serial killer.
While recuperating at home in Shelby Mills, Indiana, Dana meets her former high school classmates John Villante and Tim Carver. Football hero Tim is ashamed of flunking out of West Point, and now he’s a sheriff’s deputy. After Iraq and Afghanistan tours, John’s home with PTSD, "angry and bitter and dark." Dana survived abduction by serial killer Doc Holiday, but she still suffers from the gruesome attack by "the man who ruined her life, destroyed her career, shattered her sense of self, damaged her brain and her face." What binds the trio is their friend Casey Grant, who's been missing five years, perhaps also a Holiday victim, even if "[t]he odds against that kind of coincidence had to be astronomical." Hoag’s first 100 pages are a gut-wrenching dissection of the aftereffects of traumatic brain injury: Dana is plagued by "[f]ear, panic, grief, and anger" and haunted by fractured memories and nightmares. "Before Dana had believed in the inherent good in people. After Dana knew firsthand their capacity for evil." Impulsive and paranoid, Dana obsesses over linking Casey’s disappearance to Holiday, with her misfiring brain convincing her that "finding the truth about what had happened to Casey [was] her chance of redemption." But then Hoag tosses suspects into the narrative faster than Dana can count: Roger Mercer, Dana’s self-absorbed state senator stepfather; Mack Villante, who left son John with "no memories of his father that didn’t include drunkenness and cruelty"; even Hardy, the hard-bitten, cancer-stricken detective who investigated Casey’s disappearance. Tense, tightly woven, with every minor character, from Dana’s fiercely protective aunt to Mercer’s pudgy campaign chief, ratcheting up the tension, Hoag’s narrative explodes with an unexpected but believable conclusion.
A top-notch psychological thriller.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-525-95454-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
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