Luridly over the top from beginning to end, though it’s hard to resist a hero who reflects, “Of all the suicides he had...
An apparent suicide and the irrefutable evidence of three murders that swiftly follow are only the tip of the iceberg as DCI Andy Gilchrist of the Fife Constabulary follows a dark and bloody trail of mayhem.
Reasonable people like Gilchrist and his sidekick, DS Jessica Janes (Life for a Life, 2015, etc.), can disagree about whether Brian McCulloch had help gassing himself in his Jaguar. But there’s no doubt that McCulloch’s two daughters back home were drugged and smothered or that his wife, Amy, was decapitated, disemboweled, and skinned in his absence. The obvious suspect is Thomas Magner, McCulloch’s partner in Stratheden Enterprises, who’s already been accused of rape by 11 women. But Magner provides a convincing alibi, and then his accusers alarmingly begin to recant their stories or die. These developments should at least clear the air, but they lead to even knottier mysteries stretching back years into the past. As Gilchrist struggles to keep track of the old and new felonies St. Andrews CID suddenly finds itself investigating, he has to manage unwelcome complications in his rocky romance with married police pathologist Rebecca Cooper and control the fallout from his trademark infractions against the rules laid down by his boss, Chief Superintendent Tom Greaves, who’d clearly relish any excuse to get him tossed off the force for good. Gilchrist’s search winds up in a hyperextended Grand Guignol set piece that isn’t for the squeamish, the oversensitive, or those exasperated by repeated shifts in power between good guys and bad guys tussling over weapons that pass back and forth.
Luridly over the top from beginning to end, though it’s hard to resist a hero who reflects, “Of all the suicides he had seen, McCulloch was certainly the best dressed.”Pub Date: April 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-61373-789-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Academy Chicago
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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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