by Steven W. Horn ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 31, 2013
Dramatic and intelligent, this is a smart start to a new detective series.
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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
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by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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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
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by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
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