It’s the tallest of tall tales, of course, but it’s got robust drive, and Lashner (Veritas, 1997, etc.) deserves a tip of...
Victor Carl, Philly defense lawyer, sidles back onstage in Lashner’s latest legal melodrama.
It seems like an open-and-shut case. Here’s lawyer Guy Forrest, sitting outside his house in the Philly suburbs, naked, in the rain, his gun beside him; upstairs on the mattress lies his lover/fiancée, Hailey Prouix, dead by gunshot. A crime of passion, surely? That’s what Victor thinks, discounting Guy’s denials, and Victor should know: not only is he Guy’s close friend (they were at law school together), but he himself had been sleeping with Hailey, a femme fatale who had both men bewitched. Indeed, Guy had left his wife and family to live with her. When Guy is arrested, Victor represents him, vowing to himself to put him away. But the discovery that Guy and Hailey’s joint account has been cleaned out complicates matters. The key is a medical malpractice suit with Hailey and Guy on opposite sides: Hailey had seduced Guy in order to win massive damages for her client, and Guy’s naïveté convinces Victor that his old friend is innocent. Now the hunt is on for the real killer, and the long winding trail takes Victor to a nursing home outside Las Vegas, and then to the West Virginia town where Hailey was raised (and her high school sweetheart possibly murdered). Along the way, before the eventual courtroom theatrics, we’ll learn the Dark Secret that crippled Hailey and sent her twin sister into an asylum, a secret shamelessly embellished by Lashner’s use of Stephen Hawking and Sylvia Plath as props. Other trademark over-the-top flourishes include a knife-wielding lesbian in a dark alley and a hit man who has torn his skin to tatters in self-loathing.
It’s the tallest of tall tales, of course, but it’s got robust drive, and Lashner (Veritas, 1997, etc.) deserves a tip of the hat for Guy’s Houdini-like escape from that opening set-up.Pub Date: May 16, 2003
ISBN: 0-06-050816-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2003
King's newest is a gargantuan summer sausage, at 1144 pages his largest yet, and is made of the same spiceless grindings as ever: banal characters spewing sawdust dialogue as they blunder about his dark butcher shop. The horror this time out is from beyond the universe, a kind of impossible-to-define malevolence that has holed up in the sewers under the New England town of Derry. The It sustains itself by feeding on fear-charged human meat—mainly children. To achieve the maximum saturation of adrenalin in its victims, It presents itself sometimes as an adorable, balloon-bearing clown which then turns into the most horrible personal vision that the victims can fear. The novel's most lovingly drawn settings are the endless, lightless, muck-filled sewage tunnels into which it draws its victims. Can an entire city—like Derry—be haunted? King asks. Say, by some supergigantic, extragalactic, pregnant spider that now lives in the sewers under the waterworks and sends its evil mind up through the bathtub drain, or any drain, for its victims? In 1741, everyone in Derry township just disappeared—no bones, no bodies—and every 27 years since then something catastrophic has happened in Derry. In 1930, 170 children disappeared. The Horror behind the horrors, though, was first discovered some 27 years ago (in 1958, when Derry was in the grip of a murder spree) by a band of seven fear-ridden children known as the Losers, who entered the drains in search of It. And It they found, behind a tiny door like the one into Alice's garden. But what they found was so horrible that they soon began forgetting it. Now, in 1985, these children are a horror novelist, an accountant, a disc jockey, an architect, a dress designer, the owner of a Manhattan limousine service, and the unofficial Derry town historian. During their reunion, the Losers again face the cyclical rebirth of the town's haunting, which again launches them into the drains. This time they meet It's many projections (as an enormous, tentacled, throbbing eyeball, as a kind of pterodactyl, etc.) before going through the small door one last time to meet. . .Mama Spider! The King of the Pulps smiles and shuffles as he punches out his vulgarian allegory, but he too often sounds bored, as if whipping himself on with his favorite Kirin beer for zip.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1986
ISBN: 0451169514
Page Count: 1110
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1986
BOOK TO SCREEN
Honeyman’s endearing debut is part comic novel, part emotional thriller, and part love story.
A very funny novel about the survivor of a childhood trauma.
At 29, Eleanor Oliphant has built an utterly solitary life that almost works. During the week, she toils in an office—don’t inquire further; in almost eight years no one has—and from Friday to Monday she makes the time go by with pizza and booze. Enlivening this spare existence is a constant inner monologue that is cranky, hilarious, deadpan, and irresistible. Eleanor Oliphant has something to say about everything. Riding the train, she comments on the automated announcements: “I wondered at whom these pearls of wisdom were aimed; some passing extraterrestrial, perhaps, or a yak herder from Ulan Bator who had trekked across the steppes, sailed the North Sea, and found himself on the Glasgow-Edinburgh service with literally no prior experience of mechanized transport to call upon.” Eleanor herself might as well be from Ulan Bator—she’s never had a manicure or a haircut, worn high heels, had anyone visit her apartment, or even had a friend. After a mysterious event in her childhood that left half her face badly scarred, she was raised in foster care, spent her college years in an abusive relationship, and is now, as the title states, perfectly fine. Her extreme social awkwardness has made her the butt of nasty jokes among her colleagues, which don’t seem to bother her much, though one notices she is stockpiling painkillers and becoming increasingly obsessed with an unrealistic crush on a local musician. Eleanor’s life begins to change when Raymond, a goofy guy from the IT department, takes her for a potential friend, not a freak of nature. As if he were luring a feral animal from its hiding place with a bit of cheese, he gradually brings Eleanor out of her shell. Then it turns out that shell was serving a purpose.
Honeyman’s endearing debut is part comic novel, part emotional thriller, and part love story.Pub Date: May 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2068-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
