An eventful but overstuffed finale.
In the third and final installment of Goldberg's sardonic series about a prolific Chicago hit man posing as a Las Vegas rabbi, the mobster's dual identity begins to fall apart.
His surgically altered face pulverized by a sucker punch at a bar mitzvah, Sal Cupertine's disguise as Rabbi David Cohen is badly compromised. Bizarrely, he now resembles his former self, even under a beard. With FBI agents present and past gunning for him, along with old adversary Peaches Pocotillo, the new Native American head of the Chicago mob, he needs all the protection he can get. After Peaches burns down Sal's house in the Windy City and has ousted Family boss Ronnie Cupertine's wife and kids cut up and left in trash bags, Sal fears for the safety of his long unseen family, in protective custody somewhere. He once flirted with moral uplift after reading and quoting the Torah to become a passable rabbi: "The longer he pretended to be a rabbi, the better at being a rabbi he became." But that was four years ago. Now asked whether he has any problem with killing, he says, "None at all." While Goldberg continues to redefine hard-boiled with his streaming profanity and ripe intellectualism, he and his protagonist seem to lose interest in Sal/David's split personality. The murderous rabbi's inability to do wrong with his adoring flock in Vegas speaks to today's moral climate, but the comedic sparks that made Gangsterland (2014), the first novel in the series, so entertaining are in short supply. A sprawling effort with gratuitous elements including a cadaver farm of embalmed heads and other body parts, this book misses the concision of Goldberg's brilliant collection, The Low Desert (2021).
An eventful but overstuffed finale.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781640093041
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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