A slyly provocative crime drama.
Carmichael’s (The Seen and the Unseen, 2014, etc.) murder mystery revolves around the discovery of a dead infant at the Supreme Court of the United States.
Detetive Sgt. Saxon of D.C. Homicide gets a call from Will Hazelton, an old college buddy and officer with the Supreme Court Police. His friend has news that’s as peculiar as it is grim: The body of a dead baby girl has been found in the courthouse. There’s no conclusive evidence suggesting how the infant got there or even if she died in utero or after birth. The initial list of suspects is forbiddingly long: At least 292 people had access to the place, including nine Supreme Court justices. The body was placed in front of the chair of Justice Mariana Martinez, whose unwavering commitment to abortion-rights jurisprudence is well-known; Saxon wonders if it was meant as a political statement. Also, the baby, like Martinez, is Hispanic. Later, Saxon discovers that the justice had recently organized a group tour of 16 Cuban nationals; the cop later becomes romantically involved with one of them despite the fact that she’s only 19. Judical clerk Susan Offerman, who’s also Hispanic, is anti-abortion and is immediately considered a suspect, but Saxon suspects that the FBI is attempting to frame her. Author Carmichael takes a titillating premise and deftly turns it into a marvelous thriller. Saxon is an intriguing mess of a man whose narration and dialogue are often very funny and wryly introspective: “You might be surprised, but I’ve had nothing but positive experiences when I date murder suspects….And the women I date are almost never the actual killer.” As the story goes on, it also offers a sensitive and intelligent treatment of the issue of abortion—at one point, Saxon’s ex-fiancee plans to terminate a pregnancy—while avoiding any hint of partisan proselytizing.
A slyly provocative crime drama.Pub Date: May 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-987667-84-4
Page Count: 318
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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