A fun murder-and-mayhem detective story enhanced by historical details and a sturdy female lead.
Caroline Case and Hannibal Jones, now living in a lush penthouse in Chicago, return in Gertcher’s second installment of a series, once again navigating the crossfire of the warring Al Capone and a North Side gang.
It’s October 1928, and Caroline—formerly the madam of a houseboat brothel in the Wabash Valley and currently a private detective together with her partner Hannibal—receives an early morning phone call from neighbor and new friend Ruth Meltzer. The police are at Ruth’s apartment, having just informed her of the death of her 28-year-old son, Sydney. His lifeless body was discovered in his suite at the luxe Steven’s Hotel. Caroline and Hannibal have their next case. Sydney, a handsome, rich playboy, frequented one of Chicago’s vast assortment of speak-easies, known as “blind pigs.” As Caroline explains, “rival Chicago gangs fight bloody battles over control of the illegal booze trade. Murders are frequent, and I investigate.” Two different poisons are found in Sydney’s system, and it appears more than one person wanted him dead. Meanwhile, the duo is handed another case. Someone is trying to kill Giuseppe Costanzo’s youngest son, Michael. Giuseppe owns a string of bakeries in Chicago; not incidentally, he also launders money for Capone. There is plenty of fuel for a high-action drama, and Gertcher doesn’t disappoint. Like the series opener, the novel is enjoyably lightened by humor and a strong protagonist. And vivid portrayals of locale, décor, and clothing land readers squarely in the Roaring ’20s. One caveat: Caroline’s repetitious description of her favorite evening lounge attire becomes wearying. Nonetheless, Caroline is smart, confident, and spirited, and in between the shootings, knifings, and a kidnapping is some solid sleuthing. Gertcher supplies a sizable cast of likable secondary players; kudos go to Ruth, a clever, wealthy widow with a wickedly useful cane.
A fun murder-and-mayhem detective story enhanced by historical details and a sturdy female lead.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-9835754-6-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Wind Grass Hill Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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