Stewart (Deadly Rich, 1991, etc.) and his ace homicide detective Vincent Cardozo are at it again—tracking and thwarting another Manhattan serial killer through the gripping and blood- spattered pages of this tidy thriller. The boundary between New York's blessed and depraved becomes blurry as brutally butchered adolescent bodies—those of homeless hookers and junkies—begin cropping up in styrofoam baskets around town and all clues point to Father Joe Montgomery's Upper East Side Episcopalian church, St. Andrews. Father Joe and his loyal reverend, Bonnie Ruskay, stage musicals for promising teens, counsel upper-crust parishioners, and provide outreach to dysfunctional, down-and-out, and dangerous youths. The cases of the murdered kids are covertly parceled out to different detectives in a move that looks to hawk-eyed Cardozo like a conspiracy between the nervous cardinal and the obliging DA But Cardozo links forensic evidence—wax burns, incense traces, drugs, gruesome butchery, and wafers on their tongues—and discovers that a headshot of each murdered urchin appears in Father Joe's photo talent files. The Communion Killer (as he comes to be known for the last rites he administers) must be a priest, luring the kids into his trap through a complicated network comprised of a ruthless runaway, a transvestite hooker, a wealthy therapist, and a shady lawyer, among others. Cardozo forces the investigation, digging deep into the ugly and Byzantine pasts of the priests, the junkies, and himself, all the while stepping on the toes of strait-laced bureaucrats, St. Andrews's rich neighbors, and the retiring police captain. The suspenseful plot hurtles to its startling and satisfying conclusion, delivering all the lurid titillation that a Stewart novel promises: chase scenes, rapes, be-pearled aristocratic ladies contrasted with pregnant HIV-positive hookers, red herrings, secretive clergy, a clever cop, and lots of blood. Same thrills, different book. (Literary Guild and Mystery Guild selections)
Pub Date: July 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-385-31132-X
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
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
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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