An unassuming detective story, but one that offers a vibrant array of characters.
An Australian police detective investigates a bank manager’s disappearance in Monk’s (The Bank Inspector, 2014, etc.) thriller sequel.
When the South Australian Police decide to station a detective in the Yorke Peninsula, they transfer promising young DS Brian Shaw. He hasn’t even settled in when Great Southern Bank manager Frank Andersen goes missing; he left the office to tend to customers and never returned. Shaw soon uncovers two significant clues: Andersen’s abandoned car is parked on his property and contains the bank money that he brought with him but not his revolver; and a witness says that he spotted Andersen driving with a passenger, which is against bank policy while conducting business. Andersen himself is nowhere to be found, and Shaw soon surmises foul play. While “chasing alibis,” he finds some suspects to be less than cooperative, and the mystery deepens after the allegedly accidental death of someone with ties to the bank, which Shaw thinks is murder. Fortunately, he soon gets help from an unlikely source. Monk deftly captures the dynamic of a city detective adjusting to life in a country town; for example, Shaw receives seemingly endless invitations to people’s homes for dinner, including one that may be an attempt to set him up with someone’s daughter. Similarly, the unhurried narrative concentrates mainly on Shaw’s conversations and interrogations; some are innocuous, as when Shaw explains the procedure for upgrading a disappearance to a murder, but they serve to make other moments more shocking. A few supporting characters stand out—most notably Andersen’s wife, Kath, and South Australian Police Sgt. Arny Milhouse, who bumps heads with the newly arrived Shaw. A romantic interest for the detective, though, is introduced a bit too late and distracts from the unraveling mystery.
An unassuming detective story, but one that offers a vibrant array of characters.Pub Date: April 16, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-922238-57-3
Page Count: -
Publisher: Horizon Publishing Group
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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