An intelligently fashioned moral study, realistic and unflinching.
An attorney becomes pulled into the investigation of a murder that may be connected to a dark governmental conspiracy in this novel.
Rainy Morrow’s death marks the eighth unsolved homicide in nine months, a statistically alarming trend in a town as small as Mena, Arkansas, with a population of 5,000, a grim predicament chillingly described by Reynolds (Sanctify, 2011, etc.). Dolby Richards, a local defense lawyer who had a romantic relationship with Rainy, is tipped off by a friend, Dennis, the district attorney, that the police will soon make an arrest. He encourages Dolby to interview and represent the suspect, Paul Bighton. Bighton was found completely unconscious lying next to Rainy’s corpse, and in the absence of other suspects, seems like a credible candidate for her murderer. But when Dolby interviews him, he seems manically incoherent, a “tortured soul,” more discombobulated than violent. Bighton claims—within barely intelligible rants—that Rainy was likely killed because she knew too much about a drug-smuggling operation that involved the participation of military pilots and massive shipments of cocaine by C-130 aircrafts. Bighton dies while in custody—it’s ruled a suicide but Dolby suspects he was murdered, too—and the lawyer dives headlong into his own investigation, obtaining video evidence of the drug deliveries. Once he shoots and kills a man furtively tailing him—according to the victim’s identification, he’s a Marine—Dolby crosses the threshold beyond which there is no retreat. Reynolds convincingly ties the drug-smuggling operation and killings into a broader story about the Iran-Contra scandal, making this a delightfully unconventional combination of murder mystery and historical fiction. The author diligently develops Dolby’s character: A former hippie now disillusioned and divorced, he still maintains a vestige of idealism and is reluctant to acknowledge that the “force of pure evil” exists. But his scrutiny of Mena’s homicides challenges those moral attachments, compelling him to accept the possibility that he lives in an incorrigibly fallen world, a transformation ably chronicled by Reynolds. The author’s prose is self-assured and precise, if stylistically unspectacular.
An intelligently fashioned moral study, realistic and unflinching.Pub Date: Aug. 19, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4575-5722-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Dog Ear Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 10, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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