A thriller that ably rakes through werewolf tropes in search of new territory.
From the author of The Whaler Fortune (2014) comes a Victorian supernatural thriller about a good man coping with a science-born curse.
In London 1841, Dr. Moyer Phillips keeps a ferocious black wolf captive in his lab. As a member of the scholarly—and secret—Golden Serpent Society, the doctor dedicates his studies to controlling mental illness. His test subject is a wolf primarily because, like humans, the species maintains a social hierarchy. “Chemically, I have introduced a controlled insanity,” he tells his colleagues. One night, Phillips finds his wolf prone and unresponsive, so he examines the animal—and is bitten. Meanwhile, Cecil Griffiths arrives in Ramsbury Barlow, outside London, to find work and living arrangements. He’s taken on by the Breggins estate, where he befriends fellow worker Burney and a boy named Davey. Cecil makes even better connections through the church, including the Windham family: Graham, Cynthia, and their daughter, Marie. He’s invited to dinner on their sprawling farm, but the night is interrupted by the attack of a humanoid wolf. During the ensuing carnage, Cecil is wounded by the creature, and he later finds that his hearing and other senses have sharpened. As grisly murders begin seizing London, Cecil struggles to find the good in each day. Author Michael imbues his thriller with a trenchant darkness reminiscent of Poe and Lovecraft: “The God of this world,” Cecil tells Burney, “is not concerned with the affairs of man.” Michael’s flair for gory action is a force unto itself, as when a suspect is “stabbing and strangling with the madness of a blind animal.” Much of the prose uses Victorian wordiness, which sometimes hinders the narrative; a policeman says, “We are threshing all leads with paramountcy.” Otherwise, Michael squeezes 19th-century London for all the sordid creepiness he can, using dustmen, a psychic, and Highgate Cemetery to amplify his tale. That most of the victims are evil speaks to the theme of self-defined justice, and the finale is suitably explosive.
A thriller that ably rakes through werewolf tropes in search of new territory.Pub Date: March 22, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-615-99596-0
Page Count: 338
Publisher: Alistair's Story Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2015
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
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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