Short but pleasantly enthusiastic, as a newbie works out his investigative kinks.
An Arizona reporter tries moving past his wife’s murder a year ago by becoming an amateur gumshoe and probing another killing in this debut mystery.
Eli Quinn took a lot of time off from his gig at the Arizona Republic to track down his wife Jess’ killer. With the murderer caught and convicted, Quinn likely won’t return to the job but isn’t sure what to do next. Former co-worker Samantha Marcos believes he has the resolve to make a laudable private eye and even suggests his first client. Delores Bernstein readily agrees to hire Quinn to find whomever murdered her retired husband, Tinker. There’d been a break-in at the Bernsteins’ home three days prior to someone shooting Tinker, but only a few items, like a PC and television, were missing. Valuable art, meanwhile, was inexplicably left behind. The sheriff suspects Delores, who doesn’t have an alibi, but Quinn looks into everything, including the possibility that a burglar wanted something from the computer. The just-out-of-the-box private detective gets help from Sam, cop pal Jack “Beach” Beachum, and his trusty German shepherd sidekick, Solo, formerly of the K-9 unit. Quinn’s investigation puts him in proximity to a few dubious individuals, and when one of them thinks he’s getting too nosy, he may have no choice but to put his taekwondo skills to use. Britt aptly utilizes his novella’s short length, launching Quinn’s murder case almost immediately. There’s a good amount of references to the protagonist’s layman status, like Beach recommending he file for a private eye license as soon as possible. At the same time, Quinn’s narrative often sports the hardened cynicism of a seasoned veteran: “Delores Bernstein didn’t kill her husband. I didn’t think. Can’t rule that out.” Solo nearly steals the story; he can intimidate with a single bark and a follow-up growl. But Sam’s a worthy supporting character, and romance between her and Quinn is nicely understated (and the year since Jess’ death is an appropriate waiting time for the private investigator). A small number of suspects unfortunately makes the murderer’s eventual unmasking somewhat predictable. Regardless, watching Quinn try to stop a killer is no less fun.
Short but pleasantly enthusiastic, as a newbie works out his investigative kinks.Pub Date: July 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9977614-1-2
Page Count: 146
Publisher: Ink Spot Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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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