An elaborate but exhilarating mystery spotlighting an entirely capable heroine.
An American teacher in 1957 Turkey becomes unwittingly entangled in murder and political unrest in this thriller.
When Anna Riddle gets a telegram from her brother-in-law pleading for help, she flies to Ankara, Turkey, without hesitation. She’s caring for her 8-year-old niece, Priscilla, while career diplomat Henry Burkhardt and Anna’s half sister, Mitzi, are on a Kenya safari. Watching Priscilla isn’t easy for childless Anna. But it turns altogether unnerving when the girl runs ahead at Atatürk’s Tomb and encounters a man Anna doesn’t know—who’s soon a gunshot victim. Bizarrely, the man’s gripping a letter Anna once wrote to her fiance, Rainer, presumed dead 12 years ago near the end of World War II. Detective Veli Yaziz is suspicious of Henry (the dead man wears one of the diplomat’s suits) and, by association, Anna. Yaziz’s boss, however, wants him to forgo the murder case in favor of thwarting an alleged plot against the Grand National Assembly. A discussion on that very scheme is what Meryem Alekci, a Romani, overhears while dancing at a retired general’s palace, putting her in danger. Anna, believing Rainer may be alive, is shocked by a potential second murder and a subsequent kidnapping. Star (Trouble in a Politically Correct Town, 2017, etc.) and Beatty’s (Hell Down Under, 2017, etc.) dense plot is rife with suspense, stemming primarily from Anna’s distrust of most people surrounding her. Even young Priscilla is dubious, since it’s clear she’s withholding information from her aunt. Anna’s motivation for investigating is plausible: she discovers further links to Rainer, as well as Henry and Mitzi, and catches quite a few lies from a range of culprits, including the authorities and the Burkhardts’ neighbors. Anna is also a resourceful protagonist who transcends individuals undermining her; Yaziz is certain she’s hiding something because she fails to become hysterical after seeing a body, “as he would expect most women to do.” Sharp perspectives from Anna, Meryem, and Yaziz make the myriad other characters alarmingly enigmatic and, as a result, any villains hard to define.
An elaborate but exhilarating mystery spotlighting an entirely capable heroine.Pub Date: June 27, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9893578-7-6
Page Count: 440
Publisher: D.M. Kreg Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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