Bellotto’s detective, less ironic and more earnest in his angst than his American counterparts, proves a compelling guide to...
Originally published in Portuguese in 1995, Bellotto’s series opener introduces Remo Bellini, a private eye in the tradition of Spade and Marlowe but distinctively Brazilian.
Bellini hates his first name. Born a twin, Remo has lived in the shadow of his brother, Romulo, who died at 2 days old. Since then, Romulo has always been the brother who would have been everything Remo isn’t: an obedient son, an academic success, a lawyer like his father, Tulio. Remo went to law school but hated practicing law, so now he works for Lobo Private Investigations. Like most private eyes, he spends a lot of time getting the goods on cheating spouses. So he’s intrigued when he catches a case that turns the formula on its head. Samuel Rafidjian, an eminent pediatric surgeon, wants to find an exotic dancer who worked at the Dervish, a strip club on São Paulo’s seedy Rua Augusta. After a six-month fling with the doctor, the woman abruptly disappeared, and Rafidjian is desperate to find her. No one at the Dervish admits to knowing the missing dancer. Manager Khalid Tureg says she never worked there and assures Bellini that he’ll never find her because “women are an illusion.” Meanwhile, Bellini finds himself awash in women: Dora Lobo, the boss who sends him on this crazy case; Camila and Dinéia, two dancers answering the missing woman’s description; Fatima, a prostitute who’s obsessed with him; Beatriz, the law student he’s obsessed with; even his mother, who calls him asking him to please make up with his stubborn father. The only woman who eludes him is the one he needs most urgently to find, Ana Cíntia Lopes, the mysterious object of Dr. Rafidjian’s sincere if misguided affection.
Bellotto’s detective, less ironic and more earnest in his angst than his American counterparts, proves a compelling guide to the passionate world of São Paulo.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61775-662-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Akashic
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
Koontz widens his canvas dramatically while dimming the hard brilliance common to his shorter winners:1995’s taut masterpiece, Intensity, and 1998’s moon-drenched midsummer nightmare, Seize the Night. This time the author takes up mind control, wiring his tale into the brainwashing epics The Manchurian Candidate and last spring’s film The Matrix. The laser-beam brightness of his earlier bestsellers fades, however, as he stuffs each scene with draining chitchat and extra plotting that seldom rings with novelty. Martine “Martie” Rhodes, a video-game designer, has developed a rare mental disorder: autophobia, fear of oneself. Meanwhile, her husband Dusty’s young half-brother, Skeet Caulfield, has decided to jump off the roof of a building the two men are repairing—because Skeet has seen the Angel of the next world, who has revealed that things are pretty wonderful there, and he wants to come on over. Martie’s best friend, real-estate agent Susan Jagger, is newly coping with agoraphobia, fear of the outdoors. What’s more, Susan knows she’s being visited and raped at night by her separated husband, Eric, although all her doors and windows are locked. She can’t remember these rapes, but her panties are stained with semen. So when she sets up a camcorder to record her sleeping hours, she gets a huge surprise after viewing the tape. How these mental and physical events have come about—ditto the psychiatric background of the Keanuphobe millionairess who shows up (yes! she fears Keanu Reeves)—has something to do with the ladies’ psychiatrist, Dr. Mark Ahriman, the son of a famous dead movie director whose eyes the doctor keeps in a bottle of formaldehyde and studies, in hopes of siphoning off Dad’s inspiration. Although the whole story could have been told to better effect in 300 pages, Koontz deftly sidesteps clichÇs of expression while nonetheless applying an air pump to the suspense: an MO that keeps his yearly 17-million book sales afloat.
Pub Date: Dec. 28, 1999
ISBN: 0-553-10666-X
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Utter non-scents.
Die-hard Yankee candle maker Stella Wright (Murder’s No Votive Confidence, 2018) gets caught up in a trans-Atlantic murder plot.
Stella thoroughly enjoys her trip to Paris even though her mother, perfume expert Millie Wright, who’s scheduled to speak on a panel entitled “The Art of Scent Extractions” at the World Perfumery Conference, gets preempted by a murder. Sadly, once they’re back home in Nantucket, things get even weirder. Stella receives an anonymous note threatening her mom if Stella doesn’t turn over a secret formula hidden in Millie’s bag. Her mom can’t help because she’s in the hospital courtesy of an overenthusiastic attempt by Stella’s cat, Tinker, to befriend her. While trespassing on a suspicious sailboat, Stella meets U.S. Agent Sarah Hill, who warns her that well-known anarchist Rex Laruam plans to disrupt the upcoming Peace Jubilee using a stolen formula he secreted in Millie’s bag after he stabbed the agent guarding it back in Paris. Ignoring the advice of her friend Andy Southerland, a Nantucket cop, to leave detection to the professionals, Stella tries to unmask the elusive Laruam. As she spies on a bevy of unlikely suspects, the plot spirals further and further out of control: There’s a Canadian couple staying at an Airbnb run by Stella’s cousin Chris who whisper sweet but suspicious nothings in the dark, a shovel-wielding schoolmarm, a gang of old geezers who have a collective crush on Millie, a surprise 30th-birthday party planned by Stella’s beau, Peter Bailey, and an even more surprising impromptu airplane ride.
Utter non-scents.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4967-2141-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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