An engaging historical crime yarn set in a minefield of intolerance.
Gay couples battle the Ku Klux Klan and a predatory gangster in this period thriller set in the Roaring ’20s.
The concluding novel in Stookey’s Medicine for the Blues Trilogy finds piano player Jimmy Harper returning to Portland, Oregon, in shock after seeing his musician lover get gunned down by mobster Danny Felton in Chicago. There to catch him is previous lover Carl Holman, a surgeon whose renewed live-in relationship with Jimmy complicates life in a Portland dominated by a homophobic Ku Klux Klan. Rumored to be a gay man—he announced a fake engagement with his lesbian friend Gwen Cook to quiet the gossip—Carl also runs afoul of Klan taboos by performing surgeries at St. Mary’s Catholic Hospital and prescribing birth control to women. Friction with the Invisible Empire increases when Carl discovers that a Klansman who runs a bootlegging operation had been molesting his 12-year-old son before the boy died of appendicitis. Then Carl’s boss, another Klansman, pressures him to join the group and marry Gwen in a Klan mass wedding. As if that weren’t enough, Danny arrives in Portland and tries to blackmail Carl into giving him drugs, and the surgeon gets on the wrong side of vice cop (and Klansman) Steve Bateson when he investigates the bigot’s savage beating of a gay suspect. On the bright side, a solution to Carl’s relationship conundrum materializes: He marries Gwen and Jimmy weds her lover, Charlene, and the two ostensibly straight pairs reside in neighboring houses, which allows them to surreptitiously live as gay couples. But will that keep them off the Klan’s radar?
Stookey’s tale throws together elements from his Acquaintance (2017) and Chicago Blues (2018) in a frenetically busy, often overstuffed narrative. The romantic reveries—and graphic sex—of the previous novels are muted here. Jimmy doesn’t have much to do besides lick his wounds after his Chicago misadventure, and Carl remains preoccupied with sleuthing and strategizing his way through a maze of threats and murders. The author succeeds in conjuring a pressure-cooker atmosphere with a sinister noir vibe as Carl probes the seamy underbelly of placid Portland. Danny is a charismatic figure of insinuating malignancy. Bateson is a vicious, violent man, and Carl has to maneuver carefully around him. In one scene, barbershop customers subtly rally to protect Carl when Bateson menacingly gay-baits him; in another, the surgeon elicits enough nuance and residual conscience from the cop to reach a rapprochement that serves both men’s purposes. In Carl’s first-person voice, Stookey’s prose shows flashes of poetic imagery. (“Cawing overhead caught my ear and I looked up to see a flock of ragged black shapes flapping above me. I rested a moment, leaning against the wooden handle of the shovel while the crows circled once and flew on.”) Too often though, Carl’s sensibility sounds stolidly clinical—“During these weeks, Jimmy continued to come into my office for his periodic Wassermanns, and I kept an eye out for penile and anal warts”—or moralistic (“There are a lot of things in this world that are more unnatural than my friendship with Jimmy Harper. And one of those things is bigotry”). Still, there’s enough tension and drama in Carl’s claustrophobic predicament to keep readers turning pages.
An engaging historical crime yarn set in a minefield of intolerance.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-73260-362-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pictograph Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A bumpkin duke and a young woman belatedly acquiring a gentlewoman’s education make for an entertaining love story.
When a Regency duke would rather feed blancmange to his prize pig than pay court to prospective brides, it’s fortunate that the girl next door also likes pigs.
Anthony Farr, Duke of Radcliffe survived an unhappy first marriage and is deathly afraid of marrying again. He would rather spend his days pottering about on his farm and skipping stones on the lake with his 8-year-old son, Wakefield. But when a poor relation of the Penhallow family arrives in the neighborhood, she quickly becomes friends with both Anthony and Wakefield. Where Anthony is simple and even childlike, Jane Kent is just uneducated and still suffering from the traumas of spending her early life in poverty. In their first encounter, afternoon tea in the company of Jane’s relatives turns into a fierce competition. Jane and Anthony are both determined to devour more food than the other—all while maintaining a polite facade. It’s the first of many deftly funny scenes in the novel, although some of the jokes become a little repetitive, such as Wakefield’s frequent mispronunciations of long words. The dialogue, too, is both funny and a little tiresome, with long conversations that don’t significantly advance the plot. But the book has other strengths that set it apart from typical Regency romances. It’s body-positive. There are several scenes where Jane, Anthony, and Wakefield demolish decadent food. There’s also a little light sadomasochism, which feels surprising since the main characters are otherwise so childlike. And it's a nice portrait of what courtship is like for a dedicated single parent. The child and his needs are central to the love story.
A bumpkin duke and a young woman belatedly acquiring a gentlewoman’s education make for an entertaining love story.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-285237-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A lovely romance with sophisticated emotions.
This Victorian second-chance romance reunites a man and a woman who have put caring for their families above their own needs and desires.
Ever since Lady Anne Deveril’s father passed away six years ago, she and her mother have been clothed in black and wading through grief. In the immediate aftermath, her mother’s utter devastation had led Anne to reject a marriage offer from Felix Hartford so she could focus on caring for her. Anne and Felix’s falling out included cruel, judgmental words from both parties, so they’ve kept their distance since. Now, Anne requires a favor from him, which leads to them spending time together again as old feelings reignite. Anne learns that fun-loving, carefree Felix has more depth to him than she ever knew. His father was not the moral paragon he claimed to be, and Felix has been doing his best to right the man’s wrongs while keeping his family’s reputation intact. He’s also secretly been working in trade—unthinkable for a man of his societal standing. Anne’s and Felix’s family issues still get in the way as their relationship deepens, but they realize this time that perhaps they’re mature enough to work through it, together. In this third installment of her Belles of London series, Matthews delivers another richly detailed and emotionally tender closed-door romance. The lovingly crafted leads are both trying to do the right thing for their loved ones. The beauty and complexity in this story is that there isn’t always one right answer to every dilemma. Anne and Felix try, and they err, and they try again. It’s this realness that makes these characters interesting and their relationship captivating.
A lovely romance with sophisticated emotions.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780593337189
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2023
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