A mob tale that occasionally entertains but never satisfies.
A historical crime novel tells the story of a Mafia hit man with divided loyalties.
After the death of his father and mother, 8-year-old Frank Morris—who up to this point had lived in a tenement on the Lower East Side—is adopted by Mafia don Joseph Cabineri. Three decades later, in 1962, Frank is serving a 14-year sentence for burglary in Alcatraz. Scott Easten lives with his mother, a nurse at the nearby Presidio Army base, and accompanies her during a three-day assignment at the prison. When Frank happens to meet the boy through the prison fence, he sees the dog tags around Scott’s neck: those of his dead father, Roy Easten. Unknown to Scott, Roy is the man who saved Frank’s life during the Korean War by selflessly leaping on a grenade. “He knew this question would haunt him for the rest of his life or at least until God revealed the answer,” Frank thought at the time. “Was I saved for a reason? Or was it just chance, pure chance, an event without meaning?” Frank soon escapes from Alcatraz and resurfaces in New York, where—after cosmetic surgery to alter his appearance—he becomes a “ghost hit man” whose very existence is known only to a few. By that time, Scott has grown to manhood and been named assistant district attorney of New York. Part of his job is to rein in the city’s organized crime families, including the one that Frank serves. When push comes to shove, will Frank stay loyal to the system that raised him or pay back the sacrifice of the man who saved his life? Gratsias’ (Rootless Roots, 2016, etc.) prose is simple and direct, communicating his images with efficiency: “His now-long, dyed hair protruded from under a black New York Yankees baseball cap. Not even his best friends from the old neighborhood would recognize him. Fifteen years had passed since his metamorphosis, and aging only added to the plastic surgeon’s handicraft.” But the author displays a perplexing lack of imagination when it comes to names. There are five characters named Sam and three others called either Simpson or Simson. While Gratsias’ inclusion of the 1962 Alcatraz escape (which really did feature a man named Frank Morris) is an impressive narrative trick, it feels somewhat irrelevant to the main story of the protagonist’s dilemma. Much time is wasted in the first half of the book, both on Alcatraz and on the character of Scott, who never quite feels fully formed. While the author manages some surprising turns over the course of the book, none of them feel terribly meaningful, and his attempts to sell readers on the nobility of the Mafia and Frank in general feel romantic and disingenuous. When the great concluding moment comes, readers will have trouble feeling much at all.
A mob tale that occasionally entertains but never satisfies.Pub Date: May 28, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-07-068408-6
Page Count: 303
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: July 7, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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