Wine enthusiasts and wine collections are targeted as the police and consultant Jake Halsey chase an inscrutable killer.
A man is found dead in his wine cellar courtesy of a cyanide and wine concoction, and Det. David Riley calls friend and colleague Halsey, a “civilian expert” and the protagonist of Edgerton’s mystery novel debut. The detectives working the case quickly tie the murder to other crimes, including arson, all of which relate to wine collectors. There’s a distinct pattern among the transgressions, the labor of a psychopath whose murders are undeniably, thematically crafty—wine is even used to embalm one of the victims. The authorities call on Halsey’s skills at analyzing evidence to prevent further loss of lives and wine. Halsey is a well-rounded character, given depth with a history of a wife and daughter killed by a drunk driver and, he learns, a personal association with the titular murderer. He’s also regrettably self-indulgent, prone to reciting his resume when given a chance and spending much of his early courtship of Dr. Catherine Taylor showing off his big-ticket collectibles, antique cars and aircraft. The story is at its best during the scenes of investigation, which are methodical and meticulous but never tedious. Details of the case are often reiterated, including numerous lists of locations or methods of murder, but the story is not repetitive and instead these feel like continuous updates. The detectives are shrewd, not merely trailing the killer’s progress but anticipating his next move as well. The investigation, in fact, proves more intriguing than the killer himself, who hides behind his anonymity in random narrative segments until the inevitable meeting of adversaries. The identity of the killer may not be much of a surprise to readers, but the road to the revelation is exuberant and energetic.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0983493808
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Halsey
Review Posted Online: Dec. 29, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead’s earlier work, but a whole lot of fun to read.
Another surprise from an author who never writes the same novel twice.
Though Whitehead has earned considerable critical acclaim for his earlier work—in particular his debut (The Intuitionist, 1999) and its successor (John Henry Days, 2001)—he’ll likely reach a wider readership with his warmest novel to date. Funniest as well, though there have been flashes of humor throughout his writing. The author blurs the line between fiction and memoir as he recounts the coming-of-age summer of 15-year-old Benji Cooper in the family’s summer retreat of New York’s Sag Harbor. “According to the world, we were the definition of paradox: black boys with beach houses,” writes Whitehead. Caucasians are only an occasional curiosity within this idyll, and parents are mostly absent as well. Each chapter is pretty much a self-contained entity, corresponding to a rite of passage: getting the first job, negotiating the mysteries of the opposite sex. There’s an accident with a BB gun and plenty of episodes of convincing someone older to buy beer, but not much really happens during this particular summer. Yet by the end of it, Benji is well on his way to becoming Ben, and he realizes that he is a different person than when the summer started. He also realizes that this time in his life will eventually live only in memory. There might be some distinctions between Benji and Whitehead, though the novelist also spent his youthful summers in Sag Harbor and was the same age as Benji in 1985, when the novel is set. Yet the first-person narrator has the novelist’s eye for detail, craft of character development and analytical instincts for sharp social commentary.
Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead’s earlier work, but a whole lot of fun to read.Pub Date: April 28, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-385-52765-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2009
BOOK TO SCREEN
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