An often exciting, if overwritten, crime story strengthened by engaging character development.
After a young man stumbles upon a deadly secret, he tries to make smart decisions to keep from getting killed in David’s novel.
Rob Martino is a college student working as a furniture delivery driver—a job he only plans to keep until he graduates and finds a more lucrative career. After he and his partner Mike make a delivery to a drug gang’s house, Mike is quick to get them out of there because he recognizes the leader, Cord, who has a notorious past. However, Rob, during their brief visit, felt an instant connection to Cord’s sister, Val Greer—and despite Mike’s warnings, he wants to pursue a relationship with her. Meanwhile, Dre, a rival gang leader, spotted Rob and Mike leaving Cord’s house and suspects them of being involved in Cord’s business. Dre wants nothing more than to regain the power that Cord took from him. Rob finds out more about the criminal underworld when he and Mike deliver a couch and Rob sees another man taking drugs out of it. When they get back to the furniture depot, Rob discovers that Craig, the furniture repairman, is involved with drug dealing—and Craig knows that he knows, which sets Rob on a very dangerous path. The story benefits from being character-driven, with Rob’s actions pushing the plot forward and deepening his characterization with each decision he makes. Secondary players are also complex and three-dimensional; even those who only appear briefly feel realistic and believable. That said, this story, while excellently crafted, would benefit from less-overwhelming imagery. Much of the description is burdened with excessive detail that takes away from the story’s focus: “With muzzle flash after muzzle flash leaving overlapping, vaguely heart-shaped blobs in his field of vision, Cord grinned to himself as he watched the peeling, white-painted clapboard siding on the front of the house freckle over with bullet holes under the glow of the gibbous moon.” Still, the author balances excitement and sincerity well, taking Rob through thrilling situations with thoughtful inner monologues.
An often exciting, if overwritten, crime story strengthened by engaging character development.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 324
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.
Many years after her older brother, Bear, went missing, Barbara Van Laar vanishes from the same sleepaway camp he did, leading to dark, bitter truths about her wealthy family.
One morning in 1975 at Camp Emerson—an Adirondacks summer camp owned by her family—it's discovered that 13-year-old Barbara isn't in her bed. A problem case whose unhappily married parents disdain her goth appearance and "stormy" temperament, Barbara is secretly known by one bunkmate to have slipped out every night after bedtime. But no one has a clue where's she permanently disappeared to, firing speculation that she was taken by a local serial killer known as Slitter. As Jacob Sluiter, he was convicted of 11 murders in the 1960s and recently broke out of prison. He's the one, people say, who should have been prosecuted for Bear's abduction, not a gardener who was framed. Leave it to the young and unproven assistant investigator, Judy Luptack, to press forward in uncovering the truth, unswayed by her bullying father and male colleagues who question whether women are "cut out for this work." An unsavory group portrait of the Van Laars emerges in which the children's father cruelly abuses their submissive mother, who is so traumatized by the loss of Bear—and the possible role she played in it—that she has no love left for her daughter. Picking up on the themes of families in search of themselves she explored in Long Bright River (2020), Moore draws sympathy to characters who have been subjected to spousal, parental, psychological, and physical abuse. As rich in background detail and secondary mysteries as it is, this ever-expansive, intricate, emotionally engaging novel never seems overplotted. Every piece falls skillfully into place and every character, major and minor, leaves an imprint.
"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.Pub Date: July 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780593418918
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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