Even if the dramatic tension sometimes sags, well-drawn locations and intriguing characters keep this thriller enjoyable.
The hero of Coleman’s debut thriller has a lot to prove, including his innocence.
Peter Barrett almost had it all. He was a vice president at Hudson Enterprises, a reputable computer corporation, and he had a gorgeous wife, “two expensive cars and a home worth more than five million dollars.” The only thing he didn’t have? His father-in-law’s complete respect—and his father-in-law just happened to be his boss. Peter entered into a “high-stakes business gamble” that required him to transfer $70 million of Hudson Enterprises’ money to a government account in Cuba. If the deal succeeded, Peter would win a huge contract that his father-in-law couldn’t help but admire, so when the CIA agent brokering the deal told Peter it had to be kept in the “strictest confidence,” he agreed. The CIA agent promised Peter that the money would be returned to Hudson Enterprises within 45 days, but then the newspapers heard about the transfer—as well as rumors that Cuba was planning to buy medium-range guided missiles with the money. In the eyes of almost everyone, Peter went from being a prosperous businessman to a thief, a traitor and a terrorist. When the novel opens, Peter is trying to grapple with the public revelation of the news. He initially decides against avoiding the consequences and heads to the office, where he assumes he’ll be arrested. But when Peter sees the police and his father-in-law, he decides to follow his instincts and make a run for it. Peter’s race against the clock to prove his innocence will take him to a friend from his past, across the country and even to Cuba. But will that be enough? And will he be able to escape the people who want him dead? Coleman’s characters are vivid and believable; from Peter to his friend Sky, a former actress with an “uncanny sense of street smarts,” Coleman creates people who are realistic and quirky. Unfortunately, though fast-paced, the circumstances are often implausible. First, would Peter really be able to transfer $70 million without anyone else immediately noticing? And second, almost every time Peter gets into a tight spot, he’s miraculously saved by a new character—first Sky, then Sky’s father, then a friend of Sky’s father, among others. His adventures would have been more suspenseful if more often he’d had to rely on his own wits.
Even if the dramatic tension sometimes sags, well-drawn locations and intriguing characters keep this thriller enjoyable.Pub Date: June 27, 2013
ISBN: 978-0988596306
Page Count: 315
Publisher: Seth Coleman
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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