A fine example of historical fiction that will find an enthusiastic audience among pet lovers and fans of classic Hollywood.
Private detective Babs Norman takes on the mystery of the disappearing Hollywood dogs in Crowens’ historical novel.
In this pet-centered whodunit, the author takes readers back to 1940 and the days of classic Hollywood, where young private detective Babs Norman and her delightfully irreverent sidekick Guy Brandt attempt to solve the mystery of the disappearing dogs. The canines in question are hardly ordinary, and Babs, recently evicted from her apartment in West Hollywood, hopes to earn substantial reward money for finding them. One of the dogs is Leo, the beloved cocker spaniel of actor Basil Rathbone (famous for his portrayals of Sherlock Holmes), and the other is Asta, the highly trained fox terrier featured in the famous Thin Man films. Hired on retainer, Babs and Guy plunge into the competitive Hollywood celebrity culture, while Basil Rathbone assists them, using the sleuthing techniques of his most successful on-screen character. The motives for the canine abduction are unclear, but suspects include the mysterious German countess Velma Von Rache, who has an unusual interest in dog breeds and whose name reminds Babs of a revealing clue in the Sherlock Holmes novel A Study in Scarlet. And then there are the German-accented late-night phone calls to the home of Asta’s highly accomplished trainer, Henry East, demanding the sale of certain purebred animals. Could someone be holding the dogs for ransom? The novel takes several unexpected turns as Babs finds herself literally at sea, caught in a dangerous world spiraling rapidly into World War II. The story is well written, and protagonists Babs and Guy are endearing, but the narrative can be too cluttered at times by the sheer numbers of famous Hollywood actors, writers, and directors who make appearances. While some might struggle with the occasionally shaky balance between story and setting, readers interested in this golden era of American filmmaking will no doubt appreciate the author’s obvious mastery of the period.
A fine example of historical fiction that will find an enthusiastic audience among pet lovers and fans of classic Hollywood.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781685125424
Page Count: 299
Publisher: Level Best Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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