An important, insightful account.
Walsh’s debut novel explores the volatile relationship between justice and violence.
The story begins with an inexperienced police detective interrogating a murder suspect who quickly confesses. Allen Benson cops to the crime, explaining that he killed an unrepentant rapist who had escaped conviction because of some legal technicality. However, Benson also admits to killing scores of others, shocking Detective Michaels, the police interrogator. Benson insists on telling her the story of his life—the whole story, beginning with his orphaned childhood—in a clear attempt to unburden himself of his traumatic past. He begins by admitting that he killed a childhood friend who had become a junkie and stole money from his mother. Then, while serving in an elite unit during the Vietnam War, he murdered his superior officer. Each time Benson confesses to yet another murder, he claims the moral high road—they all deserved it, he defiantly claims—but even the simple act of confession demonstrates the weight his life of vigilante violence has placed upon his shoulders. Detective Michaels patiently midwifes the whole story from him and recounts her own secret pain; physically and emotionally abused by an alcoholic father, she still struggles with painful memories that stubbornly shadow her into adulthood. And while she initially responds to Benson’s confessions with abhorrence, she gradually develops sympathy for him, especially for his struggle to maintain a sense of goodness despite a life marred by ugly violence. And his penchant for violence is precisely what made him such an effective soldier. “The government of the United States had spent a lot of money to make me a living weapon,” he says. “I was already a killer when I joined. The army just smoothed out the edges.” Debut author Walsh, a former U.S. Marine who served in Iraq, sensitively portrays the paradox of the vigilante, a contradictory pairing of moral rectitude and a cynical disregard for the law. At its heart, this tale is about the great distance that often separates morality and murder as well as the emotional weariness that results from living with a conscience freighted by memories of loss and pain. Impressively, the author poignantly presents difficult material without punishing the reader.
An important, insightful account.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-50-236898-0
Page Count: 292
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
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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