An eventful and enjoyable romp.
In Corday’s (9 ½ Years Behind the Green Door, 2011) fantasy novel, dancers at a San Francisco burlesque theater—some living, some dead—go in search of a mobster’s money.
Alice starts working at the Moulin Rouge with her friend and fellow dancer Deirdre, who’s just confided to her that she’s pregnant and that the club owner’s son, Tommy, is the father. Soon after, Deirdre reveals the pregnancy to Tommy, who eschews responsibility and starts having an affair with a different dancer. An ensuing argument ends with Deirdre losing her footing and falling down a set of stairs, killing her. Later, Alice’s friend Miranda casts a spell of protection on her fellow dancers when the club’s ownership tries to force them into freelance employment. However, the spell has the unexpected effect of conjuring Deirdre’s ghost as well as those of other long-dead dancers. Alice and her new phantom pals soon hatch a plan to go to the Cal Neva Lodge in Tahoe, where they plan to search for Mafia cash hidden there long ago by one of the ghost’s mobster boyfriends. (They plan to open a new club, The Blue Angel, with the loot.) The ghost of Cal Neva’s former owner, Frank Sinatra, haunts the club, and the group later comes face to face with the spirit of Marilyn Monroe. This engaging supernatural adventure will particularly appeal to fans of literature set in the Bay Area, as the characters travel extensively around familiar parts of San Francisco and its environs in Alice’s Volkswagen van. It will also interest those with an enthusiasm for burlesque-theater history. The story is basically split into two sections: the group’s journey to find the Mafia money, and the bureaucratic process of opening up its new nightclub. In both parts, though, Corday makes sure that there’s a lot going on, as the dancers deal with ghost hunters filming a reality show; the return of Alice’s estranged lover; a new ghost friend, checking in on the family that he left behind; a break-in at Alice’s house; and even a lost cat.
An eventful and enjoyable romp.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-73251-361-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Denizen Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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