Reeves’ tenebrous world should appeal to ardent fans of hard-boiled fiction.
In this debut thriller, Reeves’ Brooklyn is a dark, desperate world populated by gangs, lechers, bums, addicts and murderers.
Richie Bucceroni is not your typical aging Italian from Brooklyn. He is a professor of chemistry at a Brooklyn college and an expert on the sometimes deadly effects of chemicals and drugs. When a student is found murdered with a sickly smile on his face, Richie knows it may be the result of ingesting brucine—a chemical that was recently the topic of one of his student lectures. Realizing that someone has broken into his chemical locker, Richie turns to his childhood friend detective Dominick Mancini to help solve the case. The problem is, people keep turning up dead: first a fellow professor and then the owner of the local liquor store. When Richie narrowly avoids catching a bullet himself, he realizes that he’s now the killer’s target. The only other person Richie can trust is his laboratory assistant, Candy, who teams up with him to help identify and track the murderer. Reeves’ Brooklyn is not pretty: Richie witnesses several instances of street violence, and his students, who “could not really read, write or figure at any acceptable grade level,” are seemingly all involved in gangs and drugs. The borough of Brooklyn figures so prominently that it almost becomes a character itself and provides a vivid, if desolate, sense of place. In this world of violence and apathy, it’s understandable that Richie only trusts two people. He uses humor to offset the bleak environment, and while it can be heavy-handed and repetitious (he jokes several times about the smell of a set of workout clothes), Richie is an affably self-effacing protagonist. But even the most desensitized readers may be offended by Richie’s and Mancini’s racist and sexist remarks. The ending is left wide open for a sequel, and those who don’t mind a little grit and gloom will likely want to spend more time with the sardonic chemistry professor.
Reeves’ tenebrous world should appeal to ardent fans of hard-boiled fiction.Pub Date: Dec. 29, 2011
ISBN: 978-0983686507
Page Count: 268
Publisher: William Reeves
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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