Your nerdy uncle gets creepy, transforming his vacation travelogue into Raiders of the Lost Ark meets Eyes Wide Shut. Worth...
Modern and Mayan cultures clash in scientist Ben Candidi’s sixth adventure (Bahamas West End is Murder, 2005, etc.).
Curious about the flight patterns of circling vultures, Ben talks Rebecca, his physician fiancee, into taking a quick detour on the way to the next Mayan village in the Yucatán where she was going to do research. In a clearing, they find a body unnaturally splayed on the rocks. Rebecca alertly observes that the victim’s heart is missing, and both she and Ben wonder whether the murder might involve some sort of ritual. They notice a series of handwritten hieroglyphs on the body, which they helpfully point out to the investigating officers. Ben knows better than to trust the police to do what he, a trained pharmacologist, is well-equipped to do, so he resolves to launch a full-on murder investigation. He learns that the victim is B’alam Chuc, born of a Mayan family, who’s a student at the local university. Ben speaks with the family through B’alam’s younger brother, Ichik, who’s equally invested in understanding the crime. As he conscientiously provides many ecological and historical details in his first-person narration, Ben investigates possible motives and peppers the tale with thankfully vague innuendo about his relationship with Rebecca. Each theory Ben considers is interesting and plausible, making the big reveal a little less big and revealing. You can be sure a protagonist like Ben would never cross the line into actual danger.
Your nerdy uncle gets creepy, transforming his vacation travelogue into Raiders of the Lost Ark meets Eyes Wide Shut. Worth reading only if that uncle is your hero.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-56825-189-9
Page Count: 348
Publisher: Rainbow Books, Inc.
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
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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