An absorbing moral drama with great depth.
In this novel, a murder suspect returns to his native town in Illinois nearly 40 years after the crime, spurring the local police chief to doggedly reignite the investigation.
In 1959, Keelan Putnam is trying to straighten out the crooked path of his life—a petty criminal since he was a child, he manages to land both a wife, Mae Rowan, and a job in his native Yonders, Illinois. This sleepy town, which “only made the papers when there were fires, murders or some silliness,” is brought to vivid life by Noyes. But when Keelan suddenly loses his job, he angrily heads to Earl Wyatt’s farmhouse. Keelan had sold stolen goods to Earl before and knew he kept a considerable amount of cash at home. That plan goes terribly wrong, though, and Keelan ends up murdering not only Earl, but also his wife, Esther, and his daughter, Rachel, a “feeble-minded” girl. Keelan catches a lucky break when Freeman Lane, a scrawny Black kid, suddenly and inexplicably confesses to the crime. Decades later, in 1998, Keelan returns to Yonders, arousing the scrutiny of Buster Lawton, who at the time of the killings was a rookie cop and is now the chief of police. Lawton is convinced Keelan is responsible for the Wyatt murders.
In this complex but never superfluously convoluted drama, Noyes sensitively charts the killings’ ramifications, which crescendo nearly 40 years later. At the heart of the story is the fragility of a person’s destiny and the myriad ways in which a minor setback can snowball into a tragedy—a gripping idea unfurled by the author with considerable dramatic power. Keelan was not destined to be a criminal, let alone a murderer, a fact his mother, Etna, affectingly reflects on: “Seemed like only yesterday, as folks say, that those little kids were running in and out, playing cowboys and Indians, shooting toy guns and whooping it up out back in the alley. Jezzie knew Keelan when he was still little and good, before he turned.” There are some small missteps on Noyes’ part—he tends to indulge in heavy-handed attempts at cheap symbolism. Keelan’s mother likes to discuss her own hometown of Regret, Kentucky, a clumsy foreshadowing of her son’s fate. In addition, a figure referred to as “the Devil” makes several melodramatic appearances and issues cryptic moral counsel: “You can’t rest until the reckoning.” These transparent literary devices are especially unfortunate because the story doesn’t need them—readers will be moved by Noyes’ extraordinary blend of a crime drama and an almost biblical tale of the elusiveness of moral redemption. As captivating as Lawton is—an invariant defender of justice in a morally ambiguous world—the most subtly drawn character is Keelan, a darkly violent man who, under a different set of circumstances, might have become a decent one. This is a sumptuously engrossing novel, one bursting with insights and a keen sense of the delicate balance between luck and moral choice that defines a life.
An absorbing moral drama with great depth.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9788409542918
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Trebol Editions
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.
A successful Vermont podcaster who’s elicited confessions from dozens of criminals finds herself on the other side of the table, in the hottest of hot seats, over her own troubled past.
Poe Webb was only 13 when she saw her mother, Margaret McMillian, get stabbed to death by the man she’d picked up for a quickie. Poe had vowed revenge, but how could a kid find and avenge herself on a stranger who’d vanished as quickly as he appeared? In the long years since then, Poe’s made a name for herself as a top true-crime podcaster who routinely invites her guests to tell her audience exactly what they did. Now, she’s being pressed, and pressed hard, by Ian Hindley, whose fake name echoes those of England’s Moors Murderers, to join him in a livestream her fans will find riveting because, as Hindley tells her, he’s actually Leopold Hutchins, the pickup who stabbed her mother 14 times when she failed to use her safe word. Skeptical? Hindley knows endless details about the killing that were never released by the police. If Poe won’t do the broadcast, Hindley threatens to harm everyone she loves: her father; her producer and lover, Kip Nguyen; and her black Lab, Bailey. And there’s one more complication that makes the pressure on Poe even more unbearable. Seven years ago, against all odds, she succeeded in tracking Leopold Hutchins from Burlington to New York and killing him herself. In fact, it’s that murder that Hindley most wants her to talk about. Which bully is more fearsome, the man who’s threatening her or the man she killed?
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781464226229
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
An accomplished but emotionally undercooked courtroom drama by the author who made that genre popular.
Having been falsely convicted of murder himself years ago, prosecutor Rusty Sabich defies common wisdom in defending his romantic partner’s adopted son against the same accusation.
Now 76, Rusty has retired to the (fictitious) Skageon Region in the upper Midwest, far removed from Kindle County, Turow’s Chicago stand-in, where he was a star attorney and judge. Aaron Housley, a Black man raised in a bleached rural environment, has had his troubles, including serving four months for holding drugs purchased by Mae Potter, his erratic, on-and-off girlfriend. Now, after suddenly disappearing to parts unknown with her, he returns alone. When days go by without Mae’s reappearance, it is widely assumed that Aaron harmed her. Why else would he be in possession of her phone? Following the discovery of Mae’s strangled body and incriminating evidence that points to Aaron, Rusty steps in. Opposed in court by the uncontrollable, gloriously named prosecutor Hiram Jackdorp, he fears he’s in a lose-lose situation. If he fails to get Aaron off, which is highly possible, the boy’s mother, Bea, will never forgive him. If Rusty wins the case, the quietly detached Bea—who, like half the town, has secrets—will have trouble living with the unsparing methods Rusty uses to free Aaron. In attempting to match, or at least approach, the brilliance of his groundbreaking masterpiece Presumed Innocent (1987), Turow has his own odds to overcome. No minor achievement like a previous follow-up, Innocent (2010), the new novel is a powerful display of straightforward narrative, stuffed with compelling descriptions of people, places, and the legal process. No one stages courtroom scenes better than this celebrated Chicago attorney. But the book, whose overly long scenes add up to more than 500 pages, mostly lacks the gripping intensity and high moral drama to keep those pages turning. It’s an absorbing and entertaining read, but Turow’s fans have come to expect more than that.
An accomplished but emotionally undercooked courtroom drama by the author who made that genre popular.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781538706367
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2024
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