An absorbing and highly charged story of violent payback with considerable collateral damage.
Ex-cops, killers, and junkies collide in and around San Francisco in this thriller.
In Pitts' (Knuckleball, 2017, etc.) novel, 20-year-old Steven suffers a brutal beating by men who steal his weed and leave him lying on gravel in the small town of Willits, California. Quinn McFetridge, a stranger, offers him a ride and a cigarette, but his motives aren’t altruistic. Just out of prison, he tricks Steven into helping him rescue a girl named Teresa, who he claims is his daughter, from living with a speed freak in San Francisco. En route to the city, the ex-con and Steven stop at a vineyard owned by someone Quinn calls an old friend; soon he’s a dead one. Cokehead and ex-cop Maurice Tremblay finds the vineyard owner with a puddle of blood “still growing around his body.” Tremblay discerns Quinn is the murderer. The two share a complicated back story, and for reasons yet unknown to the reader, they both want to find Teresa. Tremblay works for Ricardo Alvarez—aka Richard Allen, “a Mexican cartel guy, supposedly gone legit”—whose tentacles reach into San Francisco’s “City Hall and upward.” Widowed, retired cop Carl Bradley, assisting in finding the vintner’s killer, contacts some sources, and then he too heads to the city, looking for Quinn, Tremblay, and Teresa. Steven finds her among addicts in the Mission District. Frail-looking and bruised from shooting up, Teresa connects with Steven. They go on the run, especially from Quinn, who brutally murders anyone who can identify him. From here, the pace of the lively tale accelerates, and the reason why Teresa is hunted and the truth about her identity are revealed. The characters are well-defined: bored, lonely Carl, devoted to his dog, Buford; Quinn, with an appetite for steak and an appreciation of the power of a muscle car; and fleshy-cheeked Tremblay, a devotee of loose women and top-shelf liquor. The author’s attention to small details is a big plus—a mattress bends under Tremblay’s weight; a reporter’s eyeglasses look opaque with fingerprints—but identifying the make of every vehicle stolen or involved in a chase pockmarks the engrossing text.
An absorbing and highly charged story of violent payback with considerable collateral damage.Pub Date: June 26, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-943402-84-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Down & Out Books
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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