Red, White, a plague on both your houses.
A depressing tale about the dissolution of the Russian czarist empire—and of the human spirit.
Time: the six blood-drenched months from August 1919 to February 1920, when the Red Army and the White hacked away on more or less even terms until the shamefully mismanaged and decimated White Army was chased into the Black Sea. The Caucasus-born Karpalov (Castle Dubrava, 1982, etc.) tells most of his grim story from White points of view but makes it clear that both sides were adept at unspeakable brutality: rape, torture, indiscriminate slaughter. Yuri Skatchko, a 28-year-old colonel and the quasi protagonist, commands “Our Homeland,” one of the armored ammunition trains the Whites depend on to drive their offense. In fact, often as not, this is a war of armored trains, squared off like chivalric chargers preparing to tilt, except that the potential for damage is obviously enhanced. By the time we meet Yuri, he’s become a killing machine, robotic and unquestioning, having long since lost track of why he does what he does, aside from being good at it. The other major figure is Nata Tai, once Russia’s leading film actress, now engaged in a rather loopy, though lethal, vendetta to murder the 13 members of a satanic cult she blames for the death of her father. Nata is irresistibly beautiful and largely worthless. “You are a whore, my dear,” an admirer tells her, “but you are a magical whore.” Yuri and she meet, fall instantly into what passes for love in their dehumanized set, part, reconnect, then part again, figures in an overheated fantasy. Yuri continues killing—and also swilling vodka. Nata goes on taking lovers—an astounding number—and sniffing cocaine as if her “beautiful nose” would last forever. Neither they nor anyone else in this dispiriting story provide reason for empathy.
Red, White, a plague on both your houses.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 1-888451-11-4
Page Count: 292
Publisher: Akashic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2003
It's clearly Cat’s meow, and if you respond positively to her tempestuous carryings-on, then you'll probably forgive Iles...
A serial killer who puts the bite on victims is the villainous center of a long, long psychothriller, as southern Gothic as it gets.
Dr. Catherine (Cat) Ferry is a forensic odontologist, which is to say “an expert on human teeth and the damage they can do.” In four cases enlivening the New Orleans crime scene, however, the damage done is mostly posthumous, the victims having been snuffed first, gnawed on afterward. Cat loves being called in to help NOPD investigations. She also loves a hunky homicide detective named Sean Regan. At some point, Sean says, he will leave his wife and kids for her, but it’s a point of diminishing probability. Hard to really blame Sean, feckless as he is, since Cat’s not only bipolar, alcoholic and promiscuous but also apparently content to remain that way. And then, leaning over the chewed-upon corpse of Arthur LeGendre, she has a panic attack that amounts to an epiphany. Something’s wrong, she intuits, and makes a beeline for home in Natchez, Miss. Somehow, she has sensed a connection between the New Orleans murders and dark doings in her own past. Twenty years ago, when Cat was eight, her daddy was shot to death. A mysterious assailant, grandpapa Kirkland has insisted through the years, but Cat has always found that difficult to accept. Now, in her old bedroom in the family manse, she unexpectedly discovers forensic evidence that supports her skepticism—and discovers as well gleanings of a terrible secret. In the meantime, back in New Orleans, the investigation has heated up, and here too it seems Cat had it right. Murder in New Orleans and murder in Natchez are connected by the same kind of terrible secret.
It's clearly Cat’s meow, and if you respond positively to her tempestuous carryings-on, then you'll probably forgive Iles (The Footprints of God, 2003, etc.) his unabashed quest for bestsellerdom.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2005
ISBN: 0-7432-3470-7
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2005
The parts with Nero Wolfe, the only character Goldsborough brings to life, are almost worth waiting for.
In Archie Goodwin's 15th adventure since the death of his creator, Rex Stout, his gossipy Aunt Edna Wainwright lures him from 34th Street to his carefully unnamed hometown in Ohio to investigate the death of a well-hated bank president.
Tom Blankenship, the local police chief, thinks there’s no case since Logan Mulgrew shot himself. But Archie’s mother, Marjorie Goodwin, and Aunt Edna know lots of people with reason to have killed him. Mulgrew drove rival banker Charles Purcell out of business, forcing Purcell to get work as an auto mechanic, and foreclosed on dairy farmer Harold Mapes’ spread. Lester Newman is convinced that Mulgrew murdered his ailing wife, Lester’s sister, so that he could romance her nurse, Carrie Yeager. And Donna Newman, Lester’s granddaughter, might have had an eye on her great-uncle’s substantial estate. Nor is Archie limited to mulling over his relatives’ gossip, for Trumpet reporter Verna Kay Padgett, whose apartment window was shot out the night her column raised questions about the alleged suicide, is perfectly willing to publish a floridly actionable summary of the leading suspects that delights her editor, shocks Archie, and infuriates everyone else. The one person missing is Archie’s boss, Nero Wolfe (Death of an Art Collector, 2019, etc.), and fans will breathe a sigh of relief when he appears at Marjorie’s door, debriefs Archie, notices a telltale clue, prepares dinner for everyone, sleeps on his discovery, and arranges a meeting of all parties in Marjorie’s living room in which he names the killer.
The parts with Nero Wolfe, the only character Goldsborough brings to life, are almost worth waiting for.Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5988-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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