Put on your seat belt for this weirdly imaginative yarn and its endless hairpin twists and turns.
A genre-hopping sojourn in a Colombia both real and improbable.
A New Jersey native of Colombian descent, de la Pava opens with a touch of the roman à clef: “The airport in Cali. It’s been an era since I’ve been, so the sight of so many authorized machine guns unsettles at first.” The story quickly morphs as the protagonist, Riv del Río, is called on to exercise his skills as a private eye. He’s an existential one at that, de la Pava seasoning his now-noirish broth with dashes of Roberto Bolaño and Arturo Pérez-Reverte: As Riv puts it, searching for documentation on the missing young woman he’s been hired to find, “Mysteriously evanesce into invisibility one day and a single sheet of paper will replace you. And eventually no one will read it unless someone like me comes in and asks.” That young woman is beautiful and brilliant, so much so that she scorns her MIT teachers with a taunting note on her thesis proposal: “I don’t expect you to understand.” Riv traces Angelica’s disappearance to a preternaturally evil crime lord who, boasting of having killed God, is worshipped by minions and fed grapes by “barely clad women.” Exeter Mondragon may be Satan in a caftan, but he’s no match for Angelica, who turns up in a deus ex machina moment that recalls the bizarre science fiction conclusion of the film version of Peter Høeg’s novel Smilla’s Sense of Snow. Angelica, who’s cooked up a program she calls Supra Hominin Cognition—don’t ask—harbors plans that include the mass extermination of humankind, about which Riv muses, once the dust has settled, “Sure, she wanted to eradicate us all, but not like I’m perfect.”
Put on your seat belt for this weirdly imaginative yarn and its endless hairpin twists and turns.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781668056707
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.
Four residents of Coopers Chase, a British retirement village, compete with the police to solve a murder in this debut novel.
The Thursday Murder Club started out with a group of septuagenarians working on old murder cases culled from the files of club founder Elizabeth Best’s friend Penny Gray, a former police officer who's now comatose in the village's nursing home. Elizabeth used to have an unspecified job, possibly as a spy, that has left her with a large network of helpful sources. Joyce Meadowcroft is a former nurse who chronicles their deeds. Psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif and well-known political firebrand Ron Ritchie complete the group. They charm Police Constable Donna De Freitas, who, visiting to give a talk on safety at Coopers Chase, finds the residents sharp as tacks. Built with drug money on the grounds of a convent, Coopers Chase is a high-end development conceived by loathsome Ian Ventham and maintained by dangerous crook Tony Curran, who’s about to be fired and replaced with wary but willing Bogdan Jankowski. Ventham has big plans for the future—as soon as he’s removed the nuns' bodies from the cemetery. When Curran is murdered, DCI Chris Hudson gets the case, but Elizabeth uses her influence to get the ambitious De Freitas included, giving the Thursday Club a police source. What follows is a fascinating primer in detection as British TV personality Osman allows the members to use their diverse skills to solve a series of interconnected crimes.
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-98-488096-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
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