Detective first grade McKenna has seen firsthand many of the most notorious cases in recent Manhattan history and reports the facts in the streetwise patois of a seasoned gumshoe. McKenna joined the force in 1965 and quickly climbed through the ranks until he became a detective and a member of the elite Hostage Negotiating Team. He was directly involved in the Preppie Murder case, the investigation of the Central Park ``wilding'' in which a female jogger was beaten senseless by a gang of youths, and countless sordid crimes of passion and stupidity. He also recounts cases involving the odd, bleakly comic misadventures of the drug-addled, and he opens a fascinating window onto the riotous days of the late '60s in New York. But it's the most infamous crimes in Manhattan that form the backbone of this book. McKenna was often the first detective on the scene, and he ably describes the initial, depressing look at the crime and what may have happened. The Preppie Murder (in which a teenager from Manhattan's upper-class Upper East Side was killed by a former lover after what he described as ``rough sex'') is particularly well discussed, and McKenna's compassion for the victim rings true. It is unfortunate, however, that the detective offers no fresh insights into these crimes or into the criminal character. It is also unfortunate that the narrative foregrounds the ``as told to'' element by frequently mentioning cowriter Harrington, and McKenna's repeated refrain that all races and genders are welcome on the police force borders on harping. Written in a shorthand reminiscent of police reports, this is nevertheless an entertaining and attractive read.
Pub Date: April 10, 1996
ISBN: 0-312-14010-X
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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