A family history like many family histories—neither pretty, victimless or straightforward.
Two refugees of Estonia’s Soviet occupation collide with one another.
Likely driven by the new thirst for European thrillers in the vein of Steig Larsson, this wonderfully subtle thriller by one of Finland’s young emerging talents has found its way to English-speaking shores. The Finnish-Estonian novelist and playwright’s American debut captures both the tragic consequences of one of Europe’s biggest conflicts and the universal horrors that war inflicts on women. The novel opens with Aliide Truu, a woman of a certain age living a quiet life in 1992: “It was quiet, the way it’s quiet in late summer in a dying Estonian village—a neighbor’s rooster crowed, that was all. The silence had been peculiar that year—expectant, yet at the same time like the aftermath of a storm.” But underneath Aliide’s placid exterior lies the heart of a survivor, one who isn’t pleased to find a half-starved runaway in her front yard. Her motherly instincts are almost nil. “She ought to get a new dog. Or two,” writes Oksanen of her heroine’s initial reaction. In time, her new ward reveals her story—the girl is Zara, a sex-trafficking casualty on the run from the Russian mafia. But Zara’s only possessions open up another mystery: a card with the Estonian address of the place her grandmother was born, and an old photograph of two young girls signed, “For Aliide, from her sister.” From these thin strands, Oksanen masterfully weaves together the tale of Aliide’s treacherous family history in the late 1940s, with Zara’s unspeakable treatment at the hands of her tormentors, and ultimately Aliide’s part in Zara’s salvation. With a tone somewhere between Ian McEwan’s Atonement and the best of the current crop of European crime novelists, this bitter gem promises great things from the talented Oksansen.
A family history like many family histories—neither pretty, victimless or straightforward.Pub Date: April 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-8021-7077-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Black Cat/Grove
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2010
Very slow off the mark, though once blackmail and murder enter the picture, Scottoline moves things along with her customary...
In Scottoline’s latest family-centered thriller (Accused, 2013, etc.), Jake Buckman lets son Ryan drive the family car on a back road. Very bad idea.
The car hits someone, and she’s dead. Faced with the prospect of his teenager’s life being ruined, Jake tells him to get back in the car, and they drive away. “[D]on’t tell Mom,” Jake warns; he loves his wife, but Pam has the personality you’d expect of a superior court judge (judgmental), and their marriage is still recovering from Jake’s decision to start his own business, which has made him a mostly absentee husband and father. He’s now “one of the top-ten ranked financial planners in southeastern Pennsylvania,” though his planning skills aren’t evident as Jake ineptly tries to cover their tracks. He also has a terrible time keeping his son from confessing once they learn that the dead girl is Ryan’s high school classmate Kathleen Lindstrom. It takes more than 100 pages for the plot to involve anything other than Jake’s nerves, Pam’s suspicions and Ryan’s guilty wails, all of which are believable but not very interesting. Sleazy blackmailer Lewis Deaner livens things up, especially after he turns up murdered. If the police find those cellphone pictures Deaner had of Jake and Ryan at the scene of the crime, Jake will be a suspect. And once Ryan has blurted out the truth to his mother, furious Pam might be just as happy to see Jake in jail. The killer’s identity isn’t much of a surprise, since he’s the only character with any individual traits apart from the Buckmans and the cops, but the final twist comes out of nowhere, 10 pages from the end.
Very slow off the mark, though once blackmail and murder enter the picture, Scottoline moves things along with her customary professionalism, if scant credibility.Pub Date: April 8, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-250-01009-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A Gone Girl–esque confection with villainy and melodrama galore.
A wealthy woman with a handsome husband is preyed on by a ruthless con artist.
One day at the gym, Amber Patterson drops the magazine she’s reading between her exercise bike and that of the woman who happens to be beside her, Daphne Parrish. As she bends to pick it up, Daphne notices that it’s the publication of a cystic fibrosis foundation. What a coincidence—Daphne’s sister died of cystic fibrosis, and, why, so did Amber’s! “Slowing her pace, Amber wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. It took a lot of acting skills to cry about a sister who never existed.” Step one complete. “All she needed from Daphne was everything.” Everything, in this case, consists of Daphne’s outlandishly wealthy and blisteringly hot husband, Jackson, and all the real estate that comes with him; Daphne can definitely keep her two whiny brats. Amber hates children. But once she finds out that Daphne’s failure to give Jackson a male heir is the main source of tension in the marriage, she sees exactly how to make this work. Amber’s constant, spiteful inner monologue as she plays up to Daphne is the best thing about this book. For example, as Daphne talks about the many miseries her sister Julie went through before her death, Amber is thinking, “At least Julie had grown up in a nice house with money and parents who cared about her. Okay, she was sick and then she died. So what? A lot of people were sick. A lot of people died.…How about Amber and what she’d gone through?” Meanwhile, poor, stupid Daphne is so caught up in the joy of finally having a friend, she seems to be handing Jackson to her on a platter. Constantine’s debut novel is the work of two sisters in collaboration, and these ladies definitely know the formula.
A Gone Girl–esque confection with villainy and melodrama galore.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-266757-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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