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
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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