A solid, entertaining, and unnerving series ending.
Sacramento detectives inch closer to a serial killer—or killers—in the conclusion to Booth’s (Crimson Park, 2016, etc.) mystery trilogy.
The On-going Investigation Division handles cold cases for Sacramento PD. The current case for detectives Jake Steiner and Stan Wyld and assistant Mallory Dimante is a missing person. Or it was until they find the mutilated remains of the missing movie producer, along with someone else’s. As the investigation progresses, OID links at least one individual to the producer and Olive Park, an earlier cold case. Said individual threatens one of the detectives, and Mallory, after watching footage of the incident, determines the assailant had demanded a bear. This must be a teddy bear belonging to 7-year-old Jessie Cooper, but she and her older brother, Michael, both also connected to Olive Park, ran away from Child Protective Services. There is, however, a deeper mystery. The car in which cops found the bodies contains a fingerprint belonging to Anna Chase, an 11-year-old in New Jersey. As OID struggles to make sense out of the evidence, the trio learns of another related murder and adds people to their growing suspect list. Behind the murders lies a sinister scheme that will put at least one OID member in danger. Reading Booth’s trilogy from the beginning is a necessity. While the third installment incorporates the occasional recap, plot twists, characters’ surprise returns, and deaths are more shocking with knowledge of Books 1 and 2. The author tidily wraps up the convoluted story, most of it stemming from the preceding installments, by tying off loose ends and providing clear motivations. The murder mystery takes precedence, but nuanced relationships are a bonus, from Michael’s protecting Jessie to a possible romance between Jake and Mallory. Much of the book is unsettling. Corresponding atmospheric scenes include searching a small passageway with an odor that hits the back of Mallory’s throat, “like biting on aluminum foil, with a bouquet of rust.”
A solid, entertaining, and unnerving series ending.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9838329-3-5
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: Feb. 20, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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