An entertaining mystery set in an intriguing near future.
A man seeks vengeance for the death of his father in a climate change-ravaged Kansas in this dystopian sequel.
The year is 2048, and an ecologically devastated America has devolved into a loose association of regional republics. One year after his father was murdered, Daniel McFaul must return to his hometown of Dodge City and take control of the dead man’s restaurant—or forfeit his inheritance. He leaves his girlfriend, Sally Bergen, in Savannah, Georgia, but not before encountering a wealthy computer whiz named Hunter Houdini, who tells Daniel: “I’m the man who can help you find your father’s killer before he kills you.” Houdini’s plan is to recover the remains of the robot that lasered Mayor Plato McFaul dead in the middle of Wyatt Earp Boulevard and then promptly self-destructed. If they can find the robot, it can lead them to the cabal behind the assassination. Houdini has his own reasons for getting to the bottom of the crime: He suspects that these are the same men who kidnapped his daughter years ago. After Daniel survives an attempt on his life at his lawyer’s office, he and Houdini set up a sting inspired by the latter’s famous namesake. Daniel has his doubts about trusting Houdini—he can’t decide if the man is a fool, a con artist, or both. But he can’t rely on anyone else in Dodge, all of whom are connected to his father’s business or political interests in some way. Can Daniel live long enough to force his father’s killers to reveal themselves? And can his relationship with Sally survive the appearance of a beautiful new assistant manager at his father’s restaurant?
Congdon’s sequel to Heat 30:1 (2015) is a lighthearted mix of mystery, Western, and SF. The vision of the future he paints is simultaneously realistic and fantastical: People eat bugs; robots work as waiters; and airplanes take off and land via the use of magnets, but the restaurant business is still largely the same as it’s ever been. Despite all that has changed by 2048, the characters don’t speak that differently than they do today. In fact, they often sound like they might be from 1948: “Hey look, no slick arguments, no moral razzmatazz. If you’re going to confess to a crime, or to witnessing a crime, let me call the cops right now and do us both a favor.” At one point, Daniel even makes a casual reference to the Keystone Kops. The characters, setting, and mood are all highly enjoyable. This is an ecologically minded vision of the future that isn’t all doom and gloom. But the book’s pacing is a bit slow for a work of speculative fiction. Characters signal plans and developments long before they come to pass, which will weigh at times on readers’ patience. There aren’t quite as many surprises as one might expect, and everything winds up in a fairly predictable place. That said, the author has created a world that is pleasant to spend some time in and he’s populated it with people whom readers will like being around.
An entertaining mystery set in an intriguing near future.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-67235-402-8
Page Count: 273
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Captivating, frightening, and a singular achievement.
As Ireland devolves into a brutal police state, one woman tries to preserve her family in this stark fable.
For Eilish Stack, a molecular biologist living with her husband and four children in Dublin, life changes all at once and then slowly worsens beyond imagining. Two men appear at her door one night, agents of the new secret police, seeking her husband, Larry, a union official. Soon he is detained under the Emergency Powers Act recently pushed through by the new ruling party, and she cannot contact him. Eilish sees things shifting at work to those backing the ruling party. The state takes control of the press, the judiciary. Her oldest son receives a summons to military duty for the regime, and she tries to send him to Northern Ireland. He elects to join the rebel forces and soon she cannot contact him, either. His name and address appear in a newspaper ad listing people dodging military service. Eilish is coping with her father’s growing dementia, her teenage daughter’s depression, the vandalizing of her car and house. Then war comes to Dublin as the rebel forces close in on the city. Offered a chance to flee the country by her sister in Canada, Eilish can’t abandon hope for her husband’s and son’s returns. Lynch makes every step of this near-future nightmare as plausible as it is horrific by tightly focusing on Eilish, a smart, concerned woman facing terrible choices and losses. An exceptionally gifted writer, Lynch brings a compelling lyricism to her fears and despair while he marshals the details marking the collapse of democracy and the norms of daily life. His tonal control, psychological acuity, empathy, and bleakness recall Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006). And Eilish, his strong, resourceful, complete heroine, recalls the title character of Lynch’s excellent Irish-famine novel, Grace (2017).
Captivating, frightening, and a singular achievement.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780802163011
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
Underscores that the stories we tell about our lives and those of others can change hearts, minds, and history.
In a dystopian near future, art battles back against fear.
Ng’s first two novels—her arresting debut, Everything I Never Told You (2014), and devastating follow-up, Little Fires Everywhere (2017)—provided an insightful, empathetic perspective on America as it is. Her equally sensitive, nuanced, and vividly drawn latest effort, set in a dystopian near future in which Asian Americans are regarded with scorn and mistrust by the government and their neighbors, offers a frightening portrait of what it might become. The novel’s young protagonist, Bird, was 9 when his mother—without explanation—left him and his father; his father destroyed every sign of her. Now, when Bird is 12, a letter arrives. Because it is addressed to “Bird,” he knows it's from his mother. For three years, he has had to answer to his given name, Noah; repeat that he and his father no longer have anything to do with his mother; try not to attract attention; and endure classmates calling his mother a traitor. None of it makes sense to Bird until his one friend, Sadie, fills him in: His mother, the child of Chinese immigrants, wrote a poem that had improbably become a rallying cry for those protesting PACT—the Preserving American Culture and Traditions Act—a law that had helped end the Crisis 10 years before, ushering in an era in which violent economic protests had become vanishingly rare, but fear and suspicion, especially for persons of Asian origin, reigned. One of the Pillars of PACT—“Protects children from environments espousing harmful views”—had been the pretext for Sadie’s removal from her parents, who had sought to expose PACT’s cruelties and, Bird begins to understand, had prompted his own mother’s decision to leave. His mother's letter launches him on an odyssey to locate her, to listen and to learn. From the very first page of this thoroughly engrossing and deeply moving novel, Bird’s story takes wing. Taut and terrifying, Ng’s cautionary tale transports us into an American tomorrow that is all too easy to imagine—and persuasively posits that the antidotes to fear and suspicion are empathy and love.
Underscores that the stories we tell about our lives and those of others can change hearts, minds, and history.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-49254-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
