Another dizzying high-wire act from Bayer (Blind Side, 1989; Wallflower, 1991; etc.). The thrills this time come from watching Lt. Frank Janek tease out the connections between a routine bar pickup that left the victim drugged, robbed, and dead, and a nine-year-old sex murder, long since closed, that reeks of NYPD coverup; the final gasp of disappointment comes from watching the talented author lose his balance. For nine years, corporate-takeover king Jake Mendoza, who liked his sex games raunchy, has been doing time for hiring boxer Gus Metaxas, since a suicide victim, to kill his wife and enthusiastic S&M partner Edith. Case closed—until Janek, returning from a wildly misfired visit to Cuba to interrogate the just-discovered Mendoza maid, is confronted with the murder of Philip Dietz, a West Coast exec who avenged his firing by walking off with an out-of-this-world computer chip that was missing from the hotel room he'd brought his attractive pickup back to. We already know about the pickup—she's a professional ``bad girl'' named Gelsey who drugs, robs, and humiliates men on the make in revenge for her father's sexual abuse in a mirror maze underneath her house on a now-deserted Newark fairground. But what does all this have to do with the legendary Mendoza case? Not much, really, despite an overdose of mirror metaphors and a spectacular mirror-maze finale cribbed (with acknowledgment) from The Lady of Shanghai. The police-corruption plot shines with rot; the hints of kinky sex are gruesome as ever; and the general atmosphere is brilliantly nasty. But despite the foundations of another powerhouse procedural, the yawning gaps and heroic coincidences finally bring the funhouse down. (First printing of 25,000)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-43091-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1993
Though all the surface elements are in place, Picoult falters in her exploration of what turns a quiet kid into a murderer.
Picoult’s 14th novel (after The Tenth Circle, 2006, etc.) of a school shooting begins with high-voltage excitement, then slows by the middle, never regaining its initial pace or appeal.
Peter Houghton, 17, has been the victim of bullying since his first day of kindergarten, made all the more difficult by two factors: In small-town Sterling, N.H., Peter is in high school with the kids who’ve tormented him all his life; and his all-American older brother eggs the bullies on. Peter retreats into a world of video games and computer programming, but he’s never able to attain the safety of invisibility. And then one day he walks into Sterling High with a knapsack full of guns, kills ten students and wounds many others. Peter is caught and thrown in jail, but with over a thousand witnesses and video tape of the day, it will be hard work for the defense to clear him. His attorney, Jordan McAfee, hits on the only approach that might save the unlikable kid—a variation of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder caused by bullying. Thrown into the story is Judge Alex Cormier, and her daughter Josie, who used to be best friends with Peter until the popular crowd forced the limits of her loyalty. Also found dead was her boyfriend Matt, but Josie claims she can’t remember anything from that day. Picoult mixes McAfee’s attempt to build a defense with the mending relationship of Alex and Josie, but what proves a more intriguing premise is the response of Peter’s parents to the tragedy. How do you keep loving your son when he becomes a mass murderer? Unfortunately, this question, and others, remain, as the novel relies on repetition (the countless flashbacks of Peter’s victimization) rather than fresh insight. Peter fits the profile, but is never fully fleshed out beyond stereotype. Usually so adept at shaping the big stories with nuance, Picoult here takes a tragically familiar event, pads it with plot, but leaves out the subtleties of character.
Though all the surface elements are in place, Picoult falters in her exploration of what turns a quiet kid into a murderer.Pub Date: March 6, 2007
ISBN: 0-7434-9672-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2007
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.
In her first novel to be published in English, South Korean writer Han divides a story about strange obsessions and metamorphosis into three parts, each with a distinct voice.
Yeong-hye and her husband drift through calm, unexceptional lives devoid of passion or anything that might disrupt their domestic routine until the day that Yeong-hye takes every piece of meat from the refrigerator, throws it away, and announces that she's become a vegetarian. Her decision is sudden and rigid, inexplicable to her family and a society where unconventional choices elicit distaste and concern that borders on fear. Yeong-hye tries to explain that she had a dream, a horrifying nightmare of bloody, intimate violence, and that's why she won't eat meat, but her husband and family remain perplexed and disturbed. As Yeong-hye sinks further into both nightmares and the conviction that she must transform herself into a different kind of being, her condition alters the lives of three members of her family—her husband, brother-in-law, and sister—forcing them to confront unsettling desires and the alarming possibility that even with the closest familiarity, people remain strangers. Each of these relatives claims a section of the novel, and each section is strikingly written, equally absorbing whether lush or emotionally bleak. The book insists on a reader’s attention, with an almost hypnotically serene atmosphere interrupted by surreal images and frighteningly recognizable moments of ordinary despair. Han writes convincingly of the disruptive power of longing and the choice to either embrace or deny it, using details that are nearly fantastical in their strangeness to cut to the heart of the very human experience of discovering that one is no longer content with life as it is.
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-553-44818-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
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