A solid, well-constructed missing person case that features an appealing pair of quirky sleuths.
A pair of misfit private detectives ply their trade in present-day Chicago in this soft-boiled mystery.
Little, the author of Family Ghosts (2019), introduces two eccentrics with impressive detective skills who are opposites in appearance: Aberforth “Abe” Willard Allard, the divorced father of a 14-year-old daughter, is a lanky, sad-eyed legal genius, and C.S. “Duff” Duffy, the son of a C.S. Lewis fan, is short and stocky, like a former football player—although he’s never gotten close to a gridiron. Duff discovered three murdered bodies years ago, when he was a teenager, and has long suffered from serious obsessive-compulsive disorder, which derailed his promising academic career. Abe and Duff’s normal grind includes lots of legal work and occasional consults with police in which they wield their “weird-ass Sherlock Holmes power,” as one police detective puts it. The pair’s skills are tested when ex–CIA agent Mindy Jefferson gives them $50,000 as a retainer and challenges them to find her when she inevitably goes missing. Her mother, now deceased, had revealed that Mindy had a twin brother, adopted by another family at birth. But while trying to track him down, Mindy began to realize that she was being followed. When Mindy does, in fact, disappear, Abe and Duff must unravel the mystery. Over the course of this amusing novel, Little makes sure that the detectives’ quest and its resolution always provide readers with a fun page-turner. The two heroes both have intriguing backstories, and they both struggle, in different ways, with the niceties of navigating relationships with others. Especially poignant are Little’s accounts of Abe’s efforts to properly parent his growing daughter. These scenes, and the author’s generous application of sly humor throughout the story, effectively make Abe and Duff fully realized characters rather than merely nerdy caricatures.
A solid, well-constructed missing person case that features an appealing pair of quirky sleuths.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-79472-350-4
Page Count: 246
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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
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