edited by William Bernhardt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 1, 2001
The authors have generously donated their proceeds to the Nature Conservancy—by far the best reason to invest in their work....
Having recruited ten top veterans of legal suspense for a serial novel, editor Bernhardt (Murder One, p. 123, etc.) lets his distinguished associates write themselves into Cloud-Cuckoo-Land.
The foundation Bernhardt lays in his opening chapter, though not inspired, is certainly functional. A month after announcing for the umpteenth time his intention of cutting his family of parasites—his sozzled wife Julia, his children Marilyn and Morgan, and Morgan’s wife Sissy, an ineffable bimbo—out of his will, self-made oil magnate Arthur Hightower makes his appearance for Thanksgiving dinner when the family checks the deep-freeze for pizza and finds the frozen patriarch instead. Put on trial, Julia asks no-name attorney Devin McGee to defend her, not knowing Devin’s just had a fling with prosecutor Trent Ballard. Meantime, aspiring reporter Patrick Roswell decides to follow a tip that Arthur Hightower was seen frolicking in a hotel room two days after he’s supposed to have been killed. When the pen passes to the first of Bernhardt’s co-conspirators—Leslie Glass, Gini Hartzmark, John Katzenbach, John Lescroart, Bonnie MacDougal, Phillip Margolin, Brad Meltzer, Michael Palmer, Lisa Scottoline, and Laurence Shames, though they decline to sign their individual chapters for obvious reasons—the tale swiftly veers toward lunatic fantasy, and, by Chapter 3, Patrick is being tortured by a giant clown who cuts off his toe. Later episodes combine sexual couplings, unacknowledged children, and murderous conspiracies with such trenchant individual touches as the 20-pound rabbit Ballard walks on a leash and Sissy’s bullet-firing whistle. The collaborators, each of whom read only the preceding chapters before piling on new complications, are obviously having the time of their lives, but comedy, coherence, and legal intrigue are all sacrificed to the relentless flow of whimsy.
The authors have generously donated their proceeds to the Nature Conservancy—by far the best reason to invest in their work. Just make sure to have four or five margaritas before you strap yourself in.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-345-43768-3
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2001
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by Caitlin Mullen ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 3, 2020
A lyrical, incisive, and haunting debut.
In Atlantic City, the bodies of several women wait to be discovered and a young psychic begins having visions of terrible violence.
They are known only as Janes 1 through 6, the women who have been strangled and left in the marsh behind the seedy Sunset Motel. They wait for someone to miss them, to find them. That someone might be Clara, a teenage dropout who works the Atlantic City strip as a psychic and occasionally has visions. She can tell there's something dangerous at work, but she has other problems. To pay the rent, she begins selling her company, and then her body, to older men. One day she meets Lily, another young woman who'd escaped the depressing decay of Atlantic City for New York only to be betrayed by a man. She’s come back to AC because there’s nowhere else to go, and she spends her time working a dead-end job and drinking herself into oblivion. Together, Clara and Lily may be able to figure out the truth—but they will each lose something along the way. Mullen’s style is subtle, flowing; she switches the narrative voice with each chapter, giving us Clara and Lily but also each of the victims. At the heart of the novel lies the bitter observation that “Women get humiliated every day, in small stupid ways and in huge, disastrous ones.” Mullen writes about all the moments that women compromise themselves in the face of male desire and male power and how they learn to use sex as commerce because “men are always promised this, no matter who they are.” The other major character in the novel is Atlantic City itself: fading; falling to ruin; promising an old sort of glamour that no longer exists; swindling sad, lonely people out of their money. This backdrop is unexpected and well rendered.
A lyrical, incisive, and haunting debut.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-2748-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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by Lisa Jewell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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