Readers with a taste for the unusual (and who don't mind some nauseating passages) will find this a palatable novel about...
A dark concoction about an ambitious culinary apprentice in 1980s London, Storr’s debut features a complex title character, gothic undertones and an unnerving plot.
Killian Lone begins his journey as a sympathetic young man, a target for neighborhood bullies into adulthood and the product of a dysfunctional family. His only source of solace is his great-aunt Dorothy, who spends hours teaching him to cook when he visits her at Dor Cottage, the old family home. Killian is descended from a long line of talented chefs, including the original owner of the cottage, Mary Dor, who cooked for the first Earl of Sussex and was burned at the stake as a witch. When he's accepted at culinary school, Killian’s skills prove exceptional, and his instructor secures him an apprenticeship at the chic restaurant run by Killian’s idol, acclaimed chef Max Mann. Killian’s dreams of being taken under the chef's wing unravel as he discovers the gulf between Mann’s public persona and his private actions. Though Killian tells himself Mann is under tremendous pressure to earn a third Michelin star, the horrendous kitchen conditions begin to splinter his “turnspit dog” loyalty. Killian's work is undermined by Mann's assistant, and he's subject to a blind "taste test" that involves crackers spread with excrement. As he strives for success, his future becomes increasingly tied to a secret he uncovers at Dor Cottage following Dorothy’s death; using it transforms his career, spurs speculation about his ethics and culinary abilities, affects his relationship with the woman he loves and consumes his life. An award-winning journalist, Storr has created a disturbing tale about cutthroat rivalries in a high-profile industry, and his claim that many of the kitchen incidents are based on true stories makes it even juicier.
Readers with a taste for the unusual (and who don't mind some nauseating passages) will find this a palatable novel about ambition, human fallibility and revenge.Pub Date: March 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-3043-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Marble Arch/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2014
More perhaps than any of Connelly’s much-honored other titles, this one reveals why his procedurals are the most soulful in...
The 30th novel by the creator of Harry Bosch (The Wrong Side of Goodbye, 2016, etc.) and the Lincoln Lawyer (The Gods of Guilt, 2013, etc.) introduces an LAPD detective fighting doggedly for justice for herself and a wide array of victims.
Ever since her partner, Detective Ken Chastain, failed to back up her sexual harassment claim against Lt. Robert Olivas, her supervisor at the Robbery Homicide Division, Renée Ballard has been banished to the midnight shift—the late show. She’s kept her chin down and worked her cases, most of which are routinely passed on to the day shifts, without complaints or recriminations. But that all ends the night she and Detective John Jenkins, the partner who’s running on empty, are called to The Dancers, a nightclub where five people have been shot dead. Three of them—a bookie, a drug dealer, and a rumored mob enforcer—are no great loss, but Ballard can’t forget Cynthia Haddel, the young woman serving drinks while she waited for her acting career to take off. The case naturally falls to Olivas, who humiliatingly shunts Ballard aside. But she persists in following leads during her time off even though she’d already caught another case earlier the same night, the brutal assault on Ramona Ramone, ne Ramón Gutierrez, a trans hooker beaten nearly to death who mumbles something about “the upside-down house” before lapsing into a coma. Despite, or because of, the flak she gets from across the LAPD, Ballard soldiers on, horrified but energized when Chastain is gunned down only a few hours after she tells him off for the way he let her down two years ago. She’ll run into layers of interference, get kidnapped herself, expose a leak in the department, kill a man, and find some wholly unexpected allies before she claps the cuffs on the killer in a richly satisfying conclusion.
More perhaps than any of Connelly’s much-honored other titles, this one reveals why his procedurals are the most soulful in the business: because he finds the soul in the smallest details, faithfully executed.Pub Date: July 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-22598-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
Moody but restrained, this is a familiar tale that sets out to upend itself—and succeeds.
A missing—presumed dead—woman’s husband and teenage daughter struggle with her absence and the question of whether she is truly gone in this third novel by Brown (This Is Where We Live, 2010, etc.).
Nearly a year after her mother, Billie, disappeared while hiking a wilderness trail in Northern California, Olive, a high school junior, starts having vivid visions. In them, Billie appears in a variety of settings, speaking short, inconclusive sentences that Olive believes mean she wants to be found. But if her mother is alive, why did she disappear? That happens to be the same question Olive’s father, Jonathan, has begun asking himself after learning that Billie lied about several weekend trips she'd taken in the months before she vanished. As he digs deeper, Jonathan uncovers too many secrets to ignore, shaking his understanding of his wife and marriage but otherwise pointing in no particular direction. While he worries that Billie was unfaithful, Olive worries that she’s in danger. Both concerns feel justified; neither feels like the whole story. All the themes here are well-trod. There’s the family coping with loss and its attendant questions. There’s the Manic Pixie Dream Girl who's revealed to be darker and possibly more dangerous than believed. There’s the supernatural quality of Olive’s visions (is there a medical explanation, and does it matter?). There’s the natural shifting that happens in a family when children turn into teenagers, and there’s the ode on perfect Berkeley motherhood. It's because the author deftly incorporates all these themes into one building mystery, however, that the book is so page-turning. Readers are likely to be unsure of which outcome would be most satisfying until the very end.
Moody but restrained, this is a familiar tale that sets out to upend itself—and succeeds.Pub Date: July 11, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8946-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2017
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