A fast-paced, if slightly uneven, Western tale, told in a plain style.
Wyoming sheriff’s deputy Jim Edwards defends hearth and home from a gang of violent bikers in this neo-Western.
In the present day, a small crowd has gathered at the Rainbow Bar in Sheridan County, a tighknit corner of Wyoming nestled against the Bighorn Mountains, to hear the legend of Deputy Jim. The narrator takes the tale back to the early 1970s, when Jim is a young law enforcement recruit with a local reputation as a tenacious boxer and an affable family man. He proves himself early on in a protracted struggle between the sheriff’s department and the Wild Wolves, a violent biker gang with ties to Mexican drug cartels. As the conflict escalates, Jim exposes a widening web of corruption, which includes high-ranking members of the state government. Jim’s attention to detail, inherent toughness, and persistent pursuit of the truth earn him several comparisons to Dick Tracy from his colleagues. The bikers, led by notorious thugs Grinder and Pack Leader, hate to be bested, as do their cartel backers. As a result, they grow increasingly violent—hiding out in the mountains and swooping through town on campaigns of crime and intimidation. But after they kidnap Jim’s colleagues and threaten his wife and young son, they find that they’re up against a formidable enemy. As in any Western worth its salt, this story’s conclusion includes a scene of climactic violence, and it’s an action-packed sequence including several horseback riding officers of the law. In action scenes, Hendrickson (The Last Enemy, 2019, etc.) shows a knack for exciting pacing. Elsewhere, however, he can fall into excessive summary, as when he concludes a section with this passage: “For the rest of the winter of ’73-’74, Jim plays it cool, professional, and low key, but he still does his job very well.” Jim is ultimately an uncomplicated hero—responsible, protective, and brave to a fault—but in a classic, heroic cowboy way, which can be endearing.
A fast-paced, if slightly uneven, Western tale, told in a plain style.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-578-57135-5
Page Count: 218
Publisher: Out Reach Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 29, 2019
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
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
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