Perhaps Kertész’s other works justify the Nobel. Not this one: Orwell, Koestler, Solzhenitsyn and many others did it better.
It’s literally a “detective’s story” that unfolds in this grim novella, published in 1977 and previously untranslated, from the Nobel Prize–winning Hungarian author.
Set in an unnamed Latin American country and prefaced by the remarks of a court-appointed attorney, the book quickly settles into policeman Antonio Martens’s “confession” as he awaits trial for his complicity in torture and murder practiced by “the Corps” (secret police), which served the ill will of dethroned dictator “the Colonel.” Martens chronicles his ascension from “honest flatfoot” to ingenuous “new boy” assigned to monitor the activities of prosperous liberal department-store owner Federigo Salinas and his adult son Enrique, a university student who yearns to join his country’s radical liberal underground. Martens dutifully records his surveillance of both men—on the pretext that “our records had already identified that Enrique was going to perpetrate something sooner or later.” Undaunted by severe headaches and persistent misgivings, Martens intensifies his scrutiny, going so far as to acquire Enrique’s diary, and extend the Corps’ threats to Federigo’s terrified wife Maria and Enrique’s unconcerned girlfriend Estella (aka “Jill”). The expected occurs, and Kertész (Liquidation, 2004, etc.) manages a few chilling moments as father and son, exhausted and unhinged by relentless “interrogation,” meet the fate long since planned for them. Alas, such moments are few. Almost from the first page we feel Kertész straining to stretch this simple, predictable story to novella length. The device of the diary permits Martens to depict scenes and conversations to which he was not privy, and virtually none of these is even marginally credible. And in such “big” moments as a heartfelt climactic father-son conversation, the story collapses into redundancy and dullness.
Perhaps Kertész’s other works justify the Nobel. Not this one: Orwell, Koestler, Solzhenitsyn and many others did it better.Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-307-26644-6
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...
Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series (Stone Cold, 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.
Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.Pub Date: July 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-58321-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
© Copyright 2025 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.
