An artfully composed latticework of stories that captures the moral chaos of war.
In Mayfield’s historical novel, as World War II comes to a close, nine people with intersecting lives come to grips with their fates.
On May 7, 1945, the end of the war is celebrated in Times Square in New York City; it’s a huge event covered by Farley Sackstead, a legendary broadcaster and the “wartime voice of CBS Radio in Europe.” This voice serves as connective tissue in the author’s tangled skein of a plot, which chronicles the troubled lives of nine characters in both America and Europe. Farley is unaware of a mentally ill young man, Riley Blaine, who is on his way to Farley’s broadcasting booth to assassinate him; both the plan and the gun have been provided by the widow Selma Filbert, the “Cat Woman,” a profoundly disturbed person who finds Farley’s voice “very upsetting.” Riley, exasperated at being called an “imbecile” all of his life, is on a second mission, as well—he can’t wait to see Jenny Doyle, a 15-year-old from Queens, picked to sing the national anthem at the grand affair. Riley meets her when he is deemed mentally unfit and dismissed from the military after briefly serving with her brother Jimmy, a B-17 gunner still stationed in Germany. The author cleverly tracks the threads connecting each character with such deftness that the text, which initially reads like a collection of stand-alone short stories, is finally embroidered into a coherent whole. In one of the subplots, a Polish Jew, Antoni Pietkowski, is given the opportunity to interrogate Franz Stangl, an SS officer who presided over his captivity at the concentration camp in Sobibor; the emotionally wrenching experience is powerfully portrayed by Mayfield. The work can feel overstuffed at times—there are many subplots crammed into this short novel, which is less than 200 pages in length. Selma and Riley are the least developed characters, both little more than literary types. However, the other plotlines, despite their relative brevity, are surprisingly substantive, animated by an impressive psychological subtlety.
An artfully composed latticework of stories that captures the moral chaos of war.Pub Date: July 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781646035977
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Regal House Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 18, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Great crime fiction.
An apparent suicide threatens to destroy an Irish farm town in the final volume of French’s Cal Hooper trilogy.
In the fictional western Ireland townland of Ardnakelty, “there’s a girl going after missing.” Soon young Rachel Holohan is found dead in the river. Shortly before, she had stopped at Lena Dunne’s home, and nothing had seemed amiss. The medical examiner determines she’d swallowed antifreeze, and he presumes she then fell from a bridge into the water. The medical examiner and the town agree she’d died by suicide. But there is far more to the plot: 16-year-old Trey Reddy thinks Tommy Moynihan murdered Rachel. Moynihan doles out favors and punishments to the local townsfolk, who know it’s best not to cross him. Now rumors spread that Moynihan wants land and has a secret plan to forcibly buy up parcels from the locals. A factory will be built, or a great big data center, or who knows what. If Tommy’s son, Eugene, can get elected to the local council, then compulsory purchase orders for land will follow, and the farms will disappear. Eugene, who’d been romantically involved with Rachel, is wonderfully described as “on the weedy edge of good-looking” and just fine as long as you “don’t have high expectations in the way of chins.” Lena is engaged to the American Cal Hooper, an ex-cop turned woodworker. They are “more or less raising” Trey, and these three core characters are drawn into the mystery of Rachel’s death and may have to face the looming clouds of civilizational change for Ardnakelty. Lena is chastised for “asking your wee questions all round the townland,” and Trey wants to quit school, against Cal’s advice. Finally, the story’s best line: “You can’t go killing people just because they deserve it.”
Great crime fiction.Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9780593493465
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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