Dramatic and intelligent, this is a smart start to a new detective series.
A photographer taking pictures of gravestones uncovers evidence of a horrifying crime in this mystery novel.
Colorado photographer Sam Dawson sums up his life this way: “Divorced, no close friends, obsessed with his career, and only a dog for companionship.” Ten years ago, he was too busy to visit his dying mother; now, as some kind of absolution, he’s taking pictures of tombstones in her hometown of Oxford, Iowa. Sam uncovers eerie likenesses between the Iowa cemetery and one thousands of miles away in Cambridge, Colo. For example, Eugene Eris, a doctor, is buried in each, 18 months apart with the same birth dates and the same mysterious epitaph: “Wellborn Are My Children.” Even the gravediggers for both sites look like twins. Ignoring threats and trying to romance a beautiful genetics researcher, Sam digs through dusty file folders, computerized records and layers of bureaucracy as he zeros in on Dr. Eris’ place in the early 20th-century eugenics movement—and his hideous crimes. Horn (Another Man’s Life, 2012, etc.) has constructed a truly unsettling mystery backed by in-depth knowledge of science, Colorado bureaucracy and politics, and history. Who knew, for example, that a eugenics section of the State Board of Stock Inspection was still part of Colorado law? The pieces fit together well; e.g., an inherited genetic condition serves both to put Sam’s daughter in danger and to reveal the ironic tragedy of Eris’ schemes. Horn’s characterization, dialogue and pacing are solid. He makes the wise decision to set the novel in 1999, so plot points aren’t simplified by current technology. These days, Sam’s discoveries could have easily gone vial, but that would have given the story a different ending. A few creaky tropes from mystery thrillers can be found here: not calling the police because “who’s going to believe this wild story?”; the untrustworthy girlfriend; the bad guys hurting Sam emotionally and predictably. Horn plans further Sam Dawson mysteries, and criticisms aside, readers will look forward to the next outing.
Dramatic and intelligent, this is a smart start to a new detective series.Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2013
ISBN: 978-0983589419
Page Count: 370
Publisher: Granite Peak Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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