A disturbing but intelligently crafted crime drama.
A New York prosecutor heads an investigation into the brutal murder of a child in this novel.
Hector Ruiz, a young boy in the Bronx addled with severe autism, is found savagely killed in his home—his neck is slit so deeply, he’s nearly decapitated. Bronx Assistant District Attorney Alex Greco catches the case, an especially disturbing one for him because he lost his own son, 3-year-old Jordan, also autistic. Alex never quite recovered from the tragedy, which ruined his marriage. Hector’s father, Norman, is an obvious suspect—coldly indifferent to his son, he has a history of wanton violence. In addition, he’s involved in a dangerous underworld of criminal activity that includes trafficking women and guns; the murder of his son could be a foe’s act of retribution for one of Norman’s countless sins. Norman’s brother-in-law, Oscar Carrera, is also a candidate for the crime: He suffers from debilitating mental illness and can become adrift in a fuguelike oblivion, losing track of days at a time. But as Alex digs deeper, he uncovers a much darker and more entangled web of iniquity that involves the sexual exploitation of children, a world chillingly described by Canaff (Copperhead Road, 2014). Meanwhile, Alex contemplates a bid for local public office but is haunted by a discomfiting family secret that could be unearthed by those who oppose him. The author sensitively chronicles the police investigation and the courtroom drama that ensue as well as Alex’s attempt to clamber out of his own despair. Canaff, a former prosecutor, is a consultant who specializes in cases that involve the exploitation of children. His expertise is evident throughout the novel, expressed both in his depiction of the legal process and the gruesome world of sex trafficking. The beating heart of the plot is Alex’s own emotional struggle, affectingly conveyed. Alex tries to start anew in the wake of the trauma that changed his life but it’s not clear such a recommencement is available to him. As his girlfriend observes: “You live in a world framed by death, hon. All of it violent. You put yourself there. That’s fine, it’s a noble job, and you’re great at it. But I’m not sure you can step out of it.” While the murder mystery that unfolds is an unusually ghastly one—this material is not for fainthearted readers—it’s also intricately composed and dramatically enthralling. The author’s writing is quietly powerful—the prose is generally unadorned with literary embellishments and devices, a style that permits the plot itself to take center stage. Further, Canaff avoids the temptation of cinematic neatness in the tale’s denouement—even if the case is solved, the darkness of human life remains an imperishable mystery, an enigma he artfully presents with impressive authorial restraint.
A disturbing but intelligently crafted crime drama.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-64136-845-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Waldorf Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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