by Sharon CassanoLochman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 15, 2017
A cozy but flimsy mystery with an eccentric protagonist.
In CassanoLochman’s (Stranded on Thin Ice, 2017) thriller, a good-hearted older woman becomes involved in a criminal conspiracy.
Hattie Crumford is a chatty 62-year-old widow who describes herself as “a non-congealer with society…a clump of quirky personality floating with the rest of the population.” Having spent most of her adult life cooped up at home in a distant, childless marriage, she’s made it a point since her husband’s death to explore her native New Orleans. As the assistant to a private investigator, she never expects anything dramatic to happen to her. Then, one day, a strange man arrives in the office, warning her about the “man with the sand dollar face” before collapsing and dying in her arms. After she runs for help, she returns to find that the dead body has vanished, and detectives and police officers think that she must simply be a batty old lady. Undeterred, she decides to continue the investigation herself. But Hattie’s snooping leads her into more danger than she bargained for—especially after she finds a crumpled piece of paper with information about a mysterious substance called “Blue Diamonds.” Hattie’s first-person narrative voice is distinctive, and provides plenty of charming moments; her reflections on menopause, for instance, are laugh-out-loud funny. But although the narrative implies that the other characters are wrong to underestimate Hattie, they might have trusted her even less if they were privy to her thoughts; her musings sometimes veer into sanctimonious territory, as when she internally berates others for lacking her own friendly and thoughtful personality. She also tends to spout shallow philosophy (“Happiness [is] harnessed in the form of human connections”). Also, because readers’ perceptions of events are confined to Hattie’s lighthearted kookiness, many will be unprepared for the suddenly serious tone during the climax.
A cozy but flimsy mystery with an eccentric protagonist.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62747-235-7
Page Count: 210
Publisher: Ontario Shore Publishing LLC
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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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