An excellent thriller that dips its toes in waters both sinister and spiritual.
In this supernatural novel, the residents of a Florida suburb challenge a dead killer able to jump between bodies.
Margate, Florida, is a quiet suburb full of good neighbors, clean yards, and safe children. It’s the perfect place for recently deceased serial killer Eli Wickenscholz to wreak havoc from beyond “the veil.” As an entity of pure energy, he’d like to re-enter the physical realm. Doing so means absorbing the dark potential lurking in the average citizen. He begins manipulating some of the residents’ “psychic and sexual energy.” Lexi-Jo Lyman, meanwhile, has moved to Margate to start over. Her past involved dating Kono, a con man. Now she’s hiding from Ghost, the hitman who killed Kono. Elsewhere, Toni Arrigone runs the Heaton Motel and Bar. Toni is sure that the business’ former owners, the Muelensteins, hid “a large sum of money” that they didn’t put in the bank. Other Margate denizens caught in Eli’s trap are young Teddy Millhausen-Jones, who can tell that the sex-crazed adults are “under a spell,” and psychic Cueball Kusiniski, who, along with his daughter, Saige, learns that only a special amulet can keep Eli’s essence within a host body of his choosing. Into the mix comes Det. Kellie Sierra to carve logic from the madness. This thriller by Schimanski (Meter of Redemption, 2017, etc.) and Tiernan (Yield, 2016, etc.) feels like quintessential Florida pulp, right down to the disposal of bodies in the Everglades. The tight narrative moves like an alligator through water, giving an equal jolt of life to numerous quirky characters, including Herbert Duvane, an albino computer repairman. He and Lexi-Jo discuss Kundalini energy, which is “the latent blueprint of all that we are and all we are yet to be.” When Eli’s possessions begin, he picks likely and unlikely hosts, providing satisfying twists, among them the killer’s inability to fully control certain people. Florida’s natural magic doesn’t go unnoticed, as in the line “Teddy was mesmerized by the majestic beauty and the foreboding wilderness of the Everglades.” The finale brings surprising closure to various characters, leaving exciting space for a sequel.
An excellent thriller that dips its toes in waters both sinister and spiritual.Pub Date: June 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-68470-318-0
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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