Nuanced characters, evocative settings, tricky plot connections and a spin on genre conventions mark what appears to be the...
A serial killer, marital strife and a family tragedy dog a London cop in a police procedural that hits all the marks—and then some.
Pinborough opens by setting out the classic elements of a police procedural. London DI Cass Jones arrives at Money-penny’s, a sleek pub, to pick up his monthly payoff that lets owner Artie Mullins operate as he pleases. Jones has no compunction about the arrangement—that’s how cops survive in this miasmic London of the near future, afflicted by recession, terrorism and a new strain of AIDS that defies treatment. Jones has his own problems with cocaine and a dark moment in his past. But like all the characters here, he’s nuanced: He’s not entirely cynical and believes he can navigate the shoals of his unhappy department to solve cases, two of which he faces at the moment. The first involves the gruesome serial killings of four women over two months. Across the women’s nude bodies are scrawled in blood the words, “NOTHING IS SACRED.” And around the edges of their eyes, tiny eggs hatch maggots. The second case involves the murders of two young boys whose misfortune it was to be at the site of a drive-by gangland murder. Jones is barely on the case, which he works with a colleague with whom he had an extramarital affair and a bullying boss, before his brother, his brother’s son and wife (with whom Jones also had an affair) are found brutally slain. Worse, compelling evidence, including samples of Jones’ semen on the murdered wife, point to the DI as the culprit. His supervisor takes him off the case, his wife spurns him, and he’s left mostly alone to clear himself and solve the other cases. Then Pinborough smoothly blends another element: The case may have supernatural underpinnings.
Nuanced characters, evocative settings, tricky plot connections and a spin on genre conventions mark what appears to be the start of a distinctive series.Pub Date: April 2, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-425-25846-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
Intermittently lumpy and self-indulgent, but enormously entertaining throughout. And the Gaiman faithful—as hungry for...
The West African spider-trickster god Anansi presides benignly over this ebullient partial sequel to Gaiman’s award-winning fantasy American Gods (2001).
In his earthly incarnation as agelessly spry “Mr. Nancy,” the god has died, been buried and mourned (in Florida), and has left (in England) an adult son called Fat Charlie—though he isn’t fat; he is in fact a former “boy who was half a god . . . broken into two by an old woman with a grudge.” His other “half” is Charlie’s hitherto unknown brother Spider, summoned via animistic magic, thereafter an affable quasi-double and provocateur who steals Charlie’s fiancé Rosie and stirs up trouble with Charlie’s blackhearted boss, “weasel”-like entrepeneur-embezzler Grahame Coats. These characters and several other part-human, part-animal ones mesh in dizzying comic intrigues that occur on two continents, in a primitive “place at the end of the world,” in dreams and on a conveniently remote, extradition-free Caribbean island. The key to Gaiman’s ingenious plot is the tale of how Spider (Anansi) tricked Tiger, gaining possession of the world’s vast web of stories and incurring the lasting wrath of a bloodthirsty mortal—perhaps immortal—enemy. Gaiman juggles several intersecting narratives expertly (though when speaking as omniscient narrator, he does tend to ramble), blithely echoing numerous creation myths and folklore motifs, Terry Southern’s antic farces, Evelyn Waugh’s comic contes cruel, and even—here and there—Muriel Spark’s whimsical supernaturalism. Everything comes together smashingly, in an extended dénouement that pits both brothers against all Tiger’s malevolent forms, resolves romantic complications satisfactorily and reasserts the power of stories and songs to represent, sustain and complete us. The result, though less dazzling than American Gods, is even more moving.
Intermittently lumpy and self-indulgent, but enormously entertaining throughout. And the Gaiman faithful—as hungry for stories as Tiger himself—will devour it gratefully.Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-051518-X
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2005
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Fascinating, and not for the faint of heart.
The final part of Islington’s prodigious, sprawling fantasy trilogy (An Echo of Things To Come, 2017, etc.), in which the religious-philosophical-magical-temporal war reaches its conclusion.
Again Islington supplies a synopsis and glossary; they help, but not much. The Venerate, immortal shape-shifting wizards, wield a higher-order magic called kan, which emanates from the Darklands. However, they now serve an evil god and perhaps always have. Four friends have resolved to defeat them. Caeden, a Venerate who once did terrible wrongs in their service, bears the knowledge that he will, or already has, kill his friend and ally Davian. Davian, whose ability to use kan exceeds even Caeden's, becomes trapped in the past, where he must learn how to build kan-powered machines in order to escape. Asha channels the enormous power of her Essence, magic deriving from her personal life force, to maintain the Boundary confining the horrors of the Darklands; the heavy price she pays is entombment within a virtual-reality bubble. Wirr, now Prince Torin the Northwarden, must rally his people to hold off armies of religious fanatics and Darklands monsters long enough for the others to succeed. So what do we have here, a thaumaturgical-alchemical extravaganza? A teenage superpower fantasy to rival Marvel comics? What with the unflagging pace, so many moving parts, and so much intricate, lavish, and sometimes intimidating detail, it's nigh impossible to ascertain whether it all adds up. What matters is the author's unshakable conviction that it does—a conviction that eventually we come to share, if only by osmosis. One intractable flaw: Though there are so many immortals running around, we don't feel the weight of all their years and deeds. It's more like time's collapsed into a dimensionless present.
Fascinating, and not for the faint of heart.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-27418-0
Page Count: 864
Publisher: Orbit
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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