by Sara Cameron ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 22, 1993
An American reporter attaches himself to the testy Kenyan policeman working to solve a gory murder discovered by the journalist. In Cameron's clever first novel, everything has to do with ivory and greed. Sam Hawthorne's trip through a game park on his way to cover a rising Kenyan insurgency ends abruptly when he stops to help stranded motorists and finds them all either dead or dying. The travelers were Game Department official David Kariuki, his wife, and his driver. Sam frantically transports the fading Mrs. Kariuki to the nearest camp, but he's too late. He's also charged with murder. It is Hawthorne's bad luck that the first representative of the government on the scene is one of the most cynical of a thoroughly corrupt lot; it is his good luck that the official wrap-up gets handed to senior detective James Wangai, who is not only competent but, mirabile dictu, incorruptible. Wangai, who likes Hawthorne not at all, can't ignore Hawthorne's carefully annotated account of the discovery of the corpses and finds it thoroughly improbable that Hawthorne would have gone out of his way to announce the discovery of the bodies if he were the villain he's made out to be. Wangai begins to call in debts all around the city of Mombasa and discovers rather quickly that the murders have something to do with the growing trade in ivory, which, although banned by the Western World, is still very much in demand in Asia. It is giving nothing away to say that the murderer is a rather nervous Chinese woman, and it is a pleasure to say that Hawthorne's estranged lady friend, a stunning Masai elephant scientist, helps solve everything without ever getting too preachy about her fascinating experiments. Nicely done eco-thriller in a fascinating African setting.
Pub Date: April 22, 1993
ISBN: 1-878685-37-6
Page Count: 264
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1993
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by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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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
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by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
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