An engaging mystery with a late twist and an especially satisfying ending.
In this fifth installment of a series, a journalist and incorrigible amateur sleuth investigates a murder that disrupts a celebration at a peaceful cultural retreat in New York State.
It is the Fourth of July, and the Chautauqua Institution’s 5,000-seat Amphitheater is filled for the annual Independence Day concert. As the orchestra reaches the crescendo of Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture,” the audience pops paper bags on cue from the conductor. Lost in the cacophony is the sound of gunfire. Nobody hears it. Then Mimi Goldman, the sports editor of the Chautauquan Daily, sees EMTs racing to take out a woman on a stretcher. A 36-year-old documentary filmmaker, Maureen Donahue, has been killed. Mimi, who hails from New York City and logged several decades as a reporter and copy editor for the New York Post, plunges headfirst into the investigation. Never mind that she is about to marry her upstate beau, Walt Dellaria, and her schedule is already more than full. Who would have reason to kill Maureen? This, it turns out, is the wrong question, and it sends Mimi off on a tangent. No matter. There are plenty of little backstories to keep things gossipy and intriguing. When the prime suspect, Craig Halladay, a mentally disturbed man from New York City, turns himself in so he can proclaim his innocence, Mimi becomes suspicious that the case is being closed too quickly. Pines (Beside Still Waters, 2017, etc.), a newspaper copy editor and former reporter, produces snappy prose, and her narrative moves along at a healthy speed. On the way, readers are introduced to an assortment of eclectic secondary characters who make up the quirky ensemble of townies and visitors to the Chautauqua Institution, a well-known “summer camp for adults.” As in her previous volumes, the author takes the time to lay out the geography, history, and rich intellectual and artistic tapestry of the gated enclave, which first opened in the late 19th century. She builds her large cast of players with similar care, giving each one a chapter or two in which to star.
An engaging mystery with a late twist and an especially satisfying ending.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-72317-982-2
Page Count: 262
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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