A diverting, if sex-obsessed, caper with an unsympathetic protagonist.
A group of unlikely criminals embarks on a murder scheme in Kronwith’s raunchy debut crime novel.
Sixty-five-year-old Joseph Peck is a Long Island ophthalmologist and self-proclaimed “dog” who’s consumed by his sexual desires, even after they ruined his marriage. His favorite patient is Anna Franklin, whose body he ogles whenever she brings her stepdaughter in for a checkup. One day, Anna comes to his office alone and offers him sexual favors in exchange for his help in killing her husband, the billionaire Jonathan Franklin. Why would she come to an ophthalmologist for a hit job? Peck happens to be childhood friends with retired mobster Tony “Ace” Esposito, who needs the money that Anna is also offering. Ace knows a retired hit man, Sammy “Lover Boy” Vivino, who can take the assignment. All parties are ready and willing, so what can go wrong? Initially, the team manages to pull off the hit, making it look like an accident. What they don’t account for is the determined Detective Jane Rieger of the Nassau County Police Department’s homicide unit. However, Jane’s motivations aren’t quite as simple as they seem, as she may be after a different kind of justice. Kronwith’s prose, as narrated by Peck, is arch and colorful, as when he describes his ex-wife: “The divorce proceedings were very amicable for I realized that I was a cad and told my lawyer to give her what she wanted. I knew she wasn’t going to be a chazza (that’s Yiddish for ‘pig’) about it.” The tone of the book is unusually randy, though, reveling in a level of male fantasy that’s often creepy, as when Peck leers at a high schooler. As a result, readers will be divided on just how amusing they find the novel’s blend of humor, hijinks, and ribaldry. In purely narrative terms, the book is full of delightful twists and reversals; none of it is at all realistic, but as a bit of escapism, it does its job.
A diverting, if sex-obsessed, caper with an unsympathetic protagonist.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2020
ISBN: 979-8-69-789086-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
That college love affair you never got over? Come wallow in this gorgeous version of it.
A love triangle among young literati has a long and complicated aftermath.
King’s narrator doesn’t reveal her name until the very last page, but Sam and Yash, the brainy stars of her 17th-century literature class, call her Jordan. Actually, at first they refer to her as Daisy, for Daisy Buchanan of The Great Gatsby, but when they learn she came to their unnamed college on a golf scholarship, they change it to Jordan for Gatsby’s golfer friend. The boys are housesitting for a professor who’s spending a year at Oxford, living in a cozy, book-filled Victorian Jordan visits for the first time after watching The Deer Hunter at the student union on her first date with Sam. As their relationship proceeds, Jordan is practically living at the house herself, trying hard not to notice that she’s actually in love with Yash. A Baptist, Sam has an everything-but policy about sex that only increases the tension. The title of the book refers to a nickname for the king of hearts from an obscure card game the three of them play called Sir Hincomb Funnibuster, and both the game and variations on the moniker recur as the novel spins through and past Jordan’s senior year, then decades into the future. King is a genius at writing love stories—including Euphoria (2014), which won the Kirkus Prize—and her mostly sunny version of the campus novel is an enjoyable alternative to the current vogue for dark academia. Tragedies are on the way, though, as we know they must be, since nothing gold can stay and these darn fictional characters seem to make the same kinds of stupid mistakes that real people do. Tenderhearted readers will soak the pages of the last chapter with tears.
That college love affair you never got over? Come wallow in this gorgeous version of it.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780802165176
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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