A spirited reporter dealing with her past and helping police solve a murder in the family makes this novel hard to put down.
An African-American investigative journalist hunts her cousin’s killer and then becomes a target herself in this Southern thriller.
Beatrice “Beazy” Middleton, freshly laid off from her reporting job in Los Angeles, drives her silver Beemer cross-country to visit her family in Savannah, Georgia. Halfway there, her brother, Luther, a sheriff in rural Georgia, calls to say their 15-year-old cousin, Jayden, was murdered. Jayden, a musical prodigy, played fiddle and organ, and he “had the voice of a young Stevie Wonder.” Emad Al Alequi, whose father, Farouk, heads an Afghan heroin ring, recognized Jayden’s talent and was working as his manager. Marcus “Muhammed” Trotter, hired by Farouk to be his son’s handler, knew if Emad got overly involved with Jayden, it would interfere with the family’s drug trade. If Trotter couldn’t deter Emad, he could stop Jayden—with a “9mm hollow point, Teflon-tipped” bullet. It turns out Trotter’s history of being a very bad dude stretches back to high school, when he assaulted Beatrice, who was rescued by Luther’s best friend, Rio Deakins. Trotter relishes the chance to hurt Beatrice again while Rio, now a “goddamned gorgeous” motorcycle-riding college professor, comes back into her life and may be the perfect man for her—despite his fiancee. Hinkin’s (Deadly Focus, 2018) second Vega and Middleton Mystery, which, like the first book in the series, stars only one of the titular characters and reads like a thriller, successfully blends multiple ingredients: fast pacing, romance, danger, humor, and a crazy wild ending. Nice details pepper the story: For example, a character in a coffee shop insists “on stabilizing the table with a couple of sugar packets,” and the female redheaded police detective has skin “the color of cream with cinnamon sprinkles.” Other passages border on the poetic, such as Beatrice’s thoughts as her car races like a swift, sleek panther home to Georgia: “Licking my lips, I sought the briny tang of the Pacific, but it was gone. Other flavors were on the rise. I took a long swig of water. I was good. A little anxious, but good.”
A spirited reporter dealing with her past and helping police solve a murder in the family makes this novel hard to put down.Pub Date: April 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-942856-33-7
Page Count: 344
Publisher: Literary Wanderlust
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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