A crime tale offers some intriguing ideas, but the stiff narrative style makes for an uneven read.
This action-adventure sequel focuses on the war against two cartels in Mexico.
Marnia Gonzalez, daughter of the Mexican president, is inspired by the bravery of Jacob Edwards of the U.S. Coast Guard when he saves her from an attack on a cruise ship. She resolves to reject her life of privilege and do something to help stop the crime ravaging her country. After her training, she is assigned to the Anti-Cartel Task Force led by Col. Antonio Ramirez. That puts her in the middle of the uneasy truce between the Manerez and Santiago cartels, the two most powerful operations dealing in drugs, weapons, and other illegal activities. Marnia quickly becomes the public face of the task force when she rescues some children from Santiago’s traffickers with the help of connected hotel owner Rosemary Sargent. Marnia uses her strength and intelligence as well as her family connections to fight the cartels and the Russian money launderer Boris, who is working behind the scenes. On an assignment in northern Mexico, Marnia’s job gets more complicated when she discovers her family is involved in the corruption, and she finds an unexpected ally in Jonathan Manerez, son of Maximillian, head of the Manerez cartel. Marnia’s rise from rich kid to crime-fighting heroine provides for an intriguing tale, and Hendrickson (The Good Fight, 2018, etc.) has surrounded her with a strong cast of characters. There are some captivating concepts—a cattle charge against one of the cartel’s armies later in the book is an especially nice touch. But the author’s narrative voice is flat, and much of the story reads like a summary. In Chapter 1, Hendrickson writes of Marnia: “The horror she endured on the cruise ship dramatically and irreversibly changed her life.” Readers don’t get to see that firsthand; they are merely told about it. Similarly, when she begins her training, the author writes that “she asserted herself as a natural leader and talented military strategist” but shows none of that development.
A crime tale offers some intriguing ideas, but the stiff narrative style makes for an uneven read.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9994509-4-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Blurb
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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