In a terrific debut for retired New York policeman Dee, two detectives investigating mob activities mistakenly fish the wrong cement-filled barrel out of the East River. This one contains the remains of a wayward cop who's been missing for 10 years. While tailing aging mobster Bobo Rizzo, detectives Anthony Ryan and Joe Gregory observe Ugo Bongiovanni, reputed to be the new ``boss'' of the Fulton Fish Market, and two henchman dump a white barrel off the pier at 14 Peck Slip. Certain they've witnessed a mob hit, they're shocked when divers retrieve a rusted barrel filled with Jinx Mulgrew, a cop who'd vanished just before he was to testify about police corruption. The trail is not all that cold, however. Known as the ``King of the Bagmen,'' Mulgrew, according to Rizzo, tried to shake down Bongiovanni for 50 grand the day he turned up missing. But, says Rizzo, the mob didn't kill Mulgrew; cops did. ``You got to face that,'' he says. ``Happens in all families.'' Things get complicated when Gregory learns that his father, Liam, now retired from the force, was prepared to give his old pal Mulgrew $10,000 to help him get away. But Ryan and Gregory also discover that Liam had been seeing Mulgrew's widow for years, even before he disappeared. Then they find an old photograph of Mulgrew on a fishing trip with Rizzo and their own boss, the distinguished Inspector Neddy Flanagan. When the original barrel surfaces near Governors Island, the bullet they take from the victim matches the one taken from Zipper, a mildly retarded informant executed, apparently, for talking to them. However, when they raid the warehouse at 14 Peck Slip, the only gun they find is Mulgrew's .38 service revolver. Filled with plenty of interesting sidelights and enough cop angst to satisfy any stickler for realism. For a novice, Dee manipulates the entangled plots of this police procedural with a surprisingly sure hand.
Pub Date: July 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-446-51770-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1994
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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