With dialogue that sings and action that sizzles, this is a prime candidate for the big screen.
Character is key in this deliciously edgy thriller, screenwriter Pyne’s (The Manchurian Candidate) first novel.
A snapshot: Two 14-year-olds in Santa Barbara, Calif. Jack Baylor, a total innocent, is desperate for the approval of menacing Tory Geller. Somehow, he gets it. Six years later, they’re surfing together. When a kid grabs his wave, Tory goes ballistic, beating him to a pulp but also (accidentally) blinding Jack in one eye. Fast-forward 15 years. Jack, Los Angeles actor and inveterate bed-hopper, has just had sex with Hannah, Tory’s trust-fund wife, ended their affair and is relaxing at a Mojave Desert motel. Let the games begin. A beautiful woman called Mona walks into the bar. Jack figures her for his next conquest. They’re not alone. There’s a runaway teen (Rachel); some Marines; and three middle-aged women consoling themselves with margaritas. None of them are wallpaper; all will be used in important ways, evidence of the author’s sweet economy. Back to Jack, for this is his story. He has bedded Mona, even been moved by her vulnerability, until he learns she has two kids. Time to run. He sneaks away caddishly; soon after, Tory happens upon Mona and the kids outside Jack’s room. Jack, on a back road, is ambushed by an army of cops. Mona and the kids are missing, presumed dead, and Jack’s motel room is drenched in blood. It would be wrong to reveal much more, but the surprises come fast and furious: They include Jack’s breakout from jail, his unwanted company (Rachel again) and their trip to a border town. Over them looms the avenging shadow of Tory, armed and dangerous. What went down in Room 203? That’s part of the suspense, but the biggest part is waiting to see if Jack, with Rachel as his improbable mentor, will finally become a stand-up guy, taking responsibility for his actions, running no more.
With dialogue that sings and action that sizzles, this is a prime candidate for the big screen.Pub Date: July 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-58243-573-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2010
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Eskens’ debut is a solid and thoughtful tale of a young man used to taking on burdens beyond his years—none more dangerous...
A struggling student’s English assignment turns into a mission to solve a 30-year-old murder.
Joe Talbert has had very few breaks in his 21 years. The son of a single and very alcoholic mother, he’s worked hard to save enough money to leave his home in Austin, Minnesota, for the University of Minnesota. Although he has to leave his autistic younger brother, Jeremy Naylor, to the dubious care of their mother, Joe is determined to beat the odds and get his degree. For an assignment in his English class, he decides to interview Carl Iverson, a man convicted of raping and killing a 14-year-old girl. Carl, who maintains his innocence, is dying of cancer and has been released to a nursing home to end his life in lonely but unrepentant pain. The more Joe learns about Carl—a Vietnam vet with two Purple Hearts and a Silver Cross—the more the young man questions the conviction. Joe’s plan to write a short biography and earn an easy A turns into something more. Even after his mother is arrested for drunk driving and guilt-trips Joe into ransacking his college fund to bail her out, he soldiers on with the project, though her irresponsibility forces him to take Jeremy into his care. But it’s his younger brother who cracks the code of the long-dead murder victim’s secret diary and an attractive neighbor, Lila Nash, who has her own agenda for helping Joe solve the mystery, whatever the risk.
Eskens’ debut is a solid and thoughtful tale of a young man used to taking on burdens beyond his years—none more dangerous than championing a bitter old man convicted of a horrific crime.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61614-998-7
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Seventh Street Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
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