A taut thriller that’s peppered with acerbic humor.
An actor reluctantly joins the Irish mob in Carry’s crime novel.
When struggling actor Scott Russo and his dealer, Freddie, arrive at Tobias Milton’s SoHo apartment to start Scott in a new job as a marijuana delivery runner, they show up in time to witness Irish mob boss Aidan Murphy’s takeover of Milton’s marijuana business. On his train ride home that night, Scott reflects on his “own shortcomings as an actor and the futility of my stagnant career.” When Aidan summons Scott to Hell’s Kitchen for a meeting, Carry keeps readers in a state of anxiety and uncertainty about Scott’s future. The criminal tells Scott that the young man has a gift—an observational detachment that allows him to “function when you’re about to shit your pants”—which comes in handy when witnessing violent murder. Throughout the novel, the protagonist’s first-person commentary about the world around him gives this satirical work its heft. When describing how he lost a job as a waiter for eating part of a customer’s appetizer, for instance, Scott describes his supervisor’s face in vivid, cinematic slow motion: “her right eye twitched and her jaw muscles vibrated with tension.” In addition to mocking the restaurant world, Scott effectively ridicules aspects of his artistic calling; other actors are “a stupid, narcissistic bunch” with “self-absorbed, deluded brains,” and his acting coach, Allison Rucker, is portrayed as an alcoholic crackpot. Throughout, Carry adheres to Chekhov’s famous rule—if a gun is present in a scene, it must eventually go off—and every scene in this novel moves the story along in a meaningful way. The author’s ability to control the novel’s pacing and keep it uncluttered will appeal to fans of classic noir.
A taut thriller that’s peppered with acerbic humor.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-66290-597-1
Page Count: 231
Publisher: Bad Alley Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 31, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An unsettling, nightmare-inducing morsel from a master of suspense.
An expecting couple’s whirlwind summer trip to reconnect with family unravels into something like a game of cat and mouse.
It’s no spoiler to say that Jed and Jacy’s trip to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to visit Jed’s father, Dr. Ash, doesn’t go as expected. Jacy, as first-person narrator, is not afraid to drop hints that all is not well in Jed’s childhood home despite the happy reason for the trip—celebrating the newlyweds’ pregnancy news. After a lucid dream in a roadside motel, Jacy suggests “we could go back and just explain it wasn’t a good time. Not with the baby coming.” How different things could have been. Instead, the couple pushes on, their nervous excitement brimming. “It was tempting fate, though, wasn’t it? I see that now,” says Jacy, a couple days into the visit and growing more aware. Dr. Ash shows a touching interest in Jacy’s well-being, an eye always on her belly. It’s only natural that Jed’s mother would come up. She died in childbirth, Dr. Ash reveals. “Had Jed told me this and I’d missed it?” Jacy wonders. This is the first crack in the family facade, a chip in the paint that reveals layers of history underneath. The voice of Jacy’s own mother rings in her head—“Honey…we all marry strangers.” Lurking in the background is Mrs. Brandt, the Ash household’s longtime caretaker. Her formal nature suggests a strong loyalty to Jed’s family. “It’s hard enough seeing you,” Mrs. Brandt says. “Pregnant, fulsome. Fecund, ripening.” This ability to twist a good thing inside out until it feels shameful is classic Abbott. Jacy’s belly is suddenly a trigger, the inevitability of birth like a bomb waiting to go off. Unease turns to discomfort turns to fear when Jacy wakes up bleeding one morning, and suddenly her body no longer feels like her own. Jacy wants to leave, but Dr. Ash wants her to do what’s best for the baby. Who gets to decide? And what about Jed? Compared to Jacy, Jed reads like a ghost of a person, flat on the page. But maybe that’s the point given this is Jacy’s story to tell. Abbott masterfully uses the pretext of a pregnant woman’s heightened senses—“I could smell everything now…even the carpet glue, the wood paste in the staircase post”—to build a claustrophobic atmosphere of mistrust and insecurity reminiscent of Get Out. You’re sure to get chills.
An unsettling, nightmare-inducing morsel from a master of suspense.Pub Date: May 30, 2023
ISBN: 9780593084939
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
Riske is still Riske, and the automotive world is still the better for it.
Simon Riske drives again but not as fast.
Plying his ostensible trade as a restorer of sexy European sports cars, freelance spy Riske is in California shepherding a classic Ferrari through an auction. The car sells for $102 million, a record, and everyone is happy. Well, not everyone. The restoration did not include a critical piece of original equipment, for the very good reason that the piece was lost. But suddenly the buyer, Sylvie Bettencourt, receives news that the piece does exist, and she demands Riske find it and complete the restoration. Of course it's not that easy. Riske and his team had already scoured the mechanical world for the piece, and though they resume the search, there are no new leads. As a sidebar to the search for the gearbox, Riske researched Bettencourt and learned she was a major player in the process of laundering the fortunes of Russian oligarchs. Then Bettencourt blackmails Riske into helping her steal back some money she claims her superior has taken, and Riske becomes a mole spying on Bettencourt. In a further plot development, Carl Bildt, a Danish banker who managed the accounts Bettencourt services, is murdered, and his daughter Anna undertakes to find the killers. With Riske unraveling the oligarchical knot from the Bettencourt end and Anna pursuing her father's killers, the extent of the laundering scheme is revealed. But these are Russian fortunes, and there is the obligatory presence of hulking violent enforcers, callous ultrarich misogynists, and even a teasing pirouette by Novichok, a nerve agent. Riske is a raffish rogue, ready to ride or preferably drive a Ferrari in whatever quixotic enterprise presents itself, but in this adventure he is somewhat subdued—still irresistible, still a seasoned street fighter, but somehow less visceral. Intricately plotted, the novel reaches a climax that is somewhat surprising yet disappointing, as if the magician had pulled a mouse from his hat.
Riske is still Riske, and the automotive world is still the better for it.Pub Date: April 5, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-316-45609-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Mulholland Books/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
BOOK TO SCREEN
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