A ghastly detective story and a macabre parable that should accommodate genre fans with a nightmare or two.
Macraven’s (Testament of the Dead, 2014, etc.) latest horror outing is a two-story collection that delves into the dark hearts of people whose depravity includes murder and black magic.
In the author’s first story, “Thoughts of a Killer,” Detective Merrick is after a serial killer who’s mutilating prostitutes. A crucifix in one of the bodies implies a religious angle, but that doesn’t help Merrick whittle down the suspect list. In the course of his investigation, he encounters an abundance of unpleasant individuals, some even with the capacity for murder, but no one, it seems, who’d debase the victims in such a manner. Merrick is a memorable protagonist, tormented and haunted by both the murdered women and his partner, Cody, who was killed in the line of duty and with whom Merrick has entire conversations when organizing his thoughts on the case. Readers won’t easily identify the killer, as Merrick interrogates numerous male and female suspects; even he is prone to shifting suspicions from one person to the next and sometimes back to the original person. Scenes with Harry, the morgue attendant, relaying details of the bodies to Merrick can be stomach-churning, but they’re never outright offensive. The much-shorter “Missing Jezebel” takes place in the 19th century. Grazel Goodwin hates her sister, Abigail, for getting all their parents’ attention. Grazel’s incestuous relationship with her uncle incurs her family’s ire, and she leaves in disgrace, hiding away in the mountains where she meets Ravel, a black witch. Years later, having dabbled in witchcraft, Grazel uses a spell to lure Abigail’s daughter, Jezebel, away from her mother in a twisted tale of misguided vengeance. Both stories have a feel of vintage horror; despite the former story’s contemporary setting, its murders in the streets and butchered victims recall Jack the Ripper’s rampage. Yet the tales are vastly different. Third-person descriptions of the murders in the first story are visceral and sometimes repulsive, while the latter’s narrative spans decades. The book does have its share of flubs, particularly misspellings and mishandled punctuation, which too often distract from the otherwise engaging storylines.
A ghastly detective story and a macabre parable that should accommodate genre fans with a nightmare or two.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2014
ISBN: 978-1499082685
Page Count: 130
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Dec. 30, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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