An immersive and substantial murder mystery with a strong heroine.
In this fish-out-of-water thriller, a Richmond reporter takes on a curious homicide case in Appalachian Virginia.
Television reporter Taylor Beckett is not initially interested in driving from Richmond all the way to southwest Virginia to cover the detection of three bodies, all men, each found sealed in a plastic drum and dumped in the woods. “Somebody’s moonshine gig gone bad, probably,” thinks Taylor. “Or dope. Always dope in that part of the state.” But once she gets there, she realizes there is more to the story than meets the eye. For one, the men were all killed by a different method. For another, Eric Blevins, a sensitive, animal-loving teenage water utility employee who found the first victim, has a name very similar to that of a man from Taylor’s past. She successfully coaxes Eric into talking to her, no mean feat in the highly secretive holler culture of Randall County. Haunted by an unresolved trauma from her past, Taylor throws herself into investigating the murders, especially since the local authorities don’t appear particularly interested in doing so. Little does she know she will be forced to wade through a quagmire of corruption, addiction, prostitution, animal cruelty, and a generationslong suspicion of outsiders in her attempt to solve a case that gets right to the heart of modern Appalachia. Ryan’s (Wingspan, 2017, etc.) prose is textured and lived-in, particularly when describing the settings and people of Randall County. “It’s not odd,” says Eric, when Taylor asks him about a man shooting a hunting dog. “Not around here. A dog don’t do the job, it serves no purpose. Hunters kill ’em all the time. Leave ’em in the woods. Trade ’em, dump ’em, whatever.” Taylor—a jaded but ambitious loner who knows how to handle her male co-workers—will read as a bit overly familiar to fans of the genre, but her well-developed backstory provides an intriguing ballast and helps explain her drive to find answers. On the whole, the author manages to move beyond crime novel clichés and expose the deeper ills of the society in which her tale is set.
An immersive and substantial murder mystery with a strong heroine.Pub Date: April 21, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73360-400-0
Page Count: 375
Publisher: Tanglebranch Manor
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 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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